It's David Hawkins' 101st birthday today (February 28th)

David..........

There are some who bring a light so great to the world that even after they've gone, the light remains....                        Author unknown.

My mentor, my inspiration, my friend, my science workshop partner...........

Today I'm visiting two schools, and working with 3rd graders and second graders.
I'm going to involve the kids in one or two of the science activities David and I used when we were running workshops for teachers at The Mountain View Center for Environmental Education, 1970 - 1971.

Take a look, if you have a minute, at my google site:
Johnpaull'ssciencesite.

Enjoy........and, hey, if you're a teacher, try one or two of the science activities.

If you scroll back in this blog, you'll see much more detail about David's life as a science teacher....

See the pendulum?
David loved playing/investigating/interacting with pendulums!

Today's must-read in the NYT

Alan Alda, Spokesman for Science

FEB. 24, 2014

PLA

A Conversation With Alan Alda

The actor turned educator talks about how science can be made clearer and more accessible to the public if served with a helping of improvisation.

CHICAGO — The most popular speaker at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was not a scientist but one of science’s most high-profile advocates: the actor and writer Alan Alda.

Best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the long-running television series “M*A*S*H,” Mr. Alda, 78, has a new mission: helping train scientists to communicate to a wider audience.

We spoke twice, for a total of two hours. What follows is an edited and condensed version of our conversations.

Q. In high school, were you a science type or an art type?

A. A little of both. I was living through C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures,” art and science. This was the 1950s, right around the time he was thinking those famous thoughts. I knew I had to be a writer and actor — I’d been preparing for that since I was 8. But I was curious about science and nature, too.

Unfortunately, the way things were organized, I was forced to decide between them. In a way, the choice was made for me because the science teaching was so uncreative and discouraging. In biology, there was a teacher who talked about how when you cried, the tears got rid of toxins, so it was good for you to cry. I said, “What about the other way — is it good to laugh?” And the teacher said, “Please, be serious.”

Years later, it turns out that some scientists think it’s healthy to laugh. But a question like that, whether it turns out to be true or not, is a good thing to hear from a kid. You want to hear curiosity.

How did you become so passionate about science?

Through reading. When I was in my early 20s, I started reading every article of every issue of Scientific American. At the time, I’d been reading a lot about the paranormal and telepathy, and I thought Scientific American would help me know if any of that was true. There, I discovered a whole other way to think, based on evidence. And so I left my interest in spiritualism behind, in favor of critical thinking.

After that, I began to read books about science avidly. Even today, it’s what I mostly read.

You must have been thrilled when the magazine asked you to host its television series “Scientific American Frontiers.”

Oh, I think they asked a lot of people. I used to joke that a letter came addressed to “Occupant.”

I said I’d only be interested if they’d let me do the interviews. I saw it as a chance to learn about their work from scientists themselves. They took a chance on me because they didn’t know how it would turn out with someone who wasn’t a trained science journalist.

It was lucky they agreed, because in the process of doing the interviews, we came up with a different way of doing a science show. There were no set questions. I just came in, curious to understand the scientist’s work. And if I didn’t understand it, I’d badger them until I did.

Over the years, I must have done around 700 of these interviews, and I felt that in doing them I had stumbled onto something that could help solve a big problem the science community faces.

Which is?

That scientists often don’t speak to the rest of us the way they would if we were standing there full of curiosity. They sometimes spray information at us without making that contact that I think is crucial. If a scientist doesn’t have someone next to them, drawing them out, they can easily go into lecture mode. There can be a lot of insider’s jargon.

If they can’t make clear what their work involves, the public will resist advances. They won’t fund science. How are scientists going to get money from policy makers, if our leaders and legislators can’t understand what they do?

I heard from one member of Congress that at a meeting with scientists, the members were passing notes to one another: “Do you know what this guy is saying?” “No, do you?”

Don’t you find this sad because scientists have a great story to tell?

Every experiment is a great story. Every scientist’s life is a heroic story. There’s an attempt to achieve something of value, there’s the thrill of knowing the unknown against obstacles, and the ultimate outcome is a great payoff — if it can be achieved. Now, this is drama!

The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, how did that get started?

A few years, I began going around the country talking at universities and putting out this crazy idea: Could we teach courses to turn scientists into capable communicators? I believed I had techniques from acting, directing and writing that could help.

I didn’t get interest anywhere except at Stony Brook. We set up the Center for Communicating Science there, which a couple of years later they named after me.

You use acting improvisations to teach scientists to become better communicators. How does that work?

Well, we don’t do comedy improvisation or making things up. The object is to put people through games and exercises that force them to make contact with the other player. You have to observe the other person, anticipate what they are going to do. You almost have to read their minds.

We teach other skills too: how to distill their messages, how to do on-camera interviews, how to speak on panels. These are all things scientists have not been trained for and it’s useful for them to know.

Your center has initiated a project called “The Flame Challenge.” What is it?

It’s something from my childhood. When I was about 11, I got obsessed with what was happening in a flame. I tried to figure out why they were so different from anything else I had ever seen. It gave off heat and light and you could put your finger through it — it didn’t have substance, apparently. There was nothing like it. So I asked a teacher. “It’s oxidation!” she said, flatly. No elaboration. It shut me down.

So we started a contest for scientists: Tell us what a flame is in a way that an 11-year-old can understand. The point was to challenge scientists to explain something difficult in words that were both easy to understand and accurate. The first year we had 6,000 entries — kids and scientists. Now we have 20,000. This year, the question is “What is color?” I invite your readers to participate. The deadline is March 1.

Does it thrill you that you’re bringing C. P. Snow’s two cultures closer together?

You bet it does. Science and art are two long-lost lovers, yearning to be reunited. And now I get to be a matchmaker.

My first attendance at a Douglas County Board of Education Meeting

The following article is now on YOURHUB!!!!


Well, last night's Douglas School Board of Education public meeting was, for me, an experience, a rich learning experience.

I arrived early for the proposed start time of 7 p.m. The room was already packed and I waited patiently until, finally, being given a seat by the security officer in the front row at around 7:20 p.m.

The first item on the agenda was an open forum. A number of people from the community (about a dozen, I think) had asked to speak. Each person was given three minutes. The audience was told that there would be no response from the Board to any of the speakers and that clapping was inappropriate,

 The first person’s name was called and she came to the front of the room and stood by a small podium on which there was a small microphone. She faced the Board (sitting in a semi-circle) with her back towards the audience. The room went very quite as she introduced herself, thanked the Board for giving her the opportunity to speak, and then read quietly but firmly from her notes.

• I listened carefully in turn to each of the speakers.

•            I noted that each spoke from notes – notes, I assume, carefully considered to make full use of the allotted time and carefully considered to be direct and unambiguous.

• ·       I was struck by the quality of the writing in all but two of the presentations.

• ·       I was particularly struck that each speaker had a strong, factually-based case to make against either the Board or the Superintendent, or both. The issues were common to all but two of the presentations - professional concerns of teachers, and the alleged misuse of budgets.

• ·       I noted that each person, bar one, was very composed and appeared unafraid to make eye contact when talking about one particular board member - or the Superintendent.

• ·       Not one speaker, at any time, complimented the Board or the Superintendent.

• ·       I was struck by the fixed smile on one particular Board member's face, the non-committal stare of others.

• ·       I was fascinated by, and in awe of, each speaker's determined facial expression and strong, celebratory body language when s/he left the podium.

Overall, I was concerned that the entire dramatic effect and impact of each presentation was impaired, for the very interested audience, by the positioning of the podium.

Surely the audience has a right, a need, in fact, to see the face of the speaker? Shouldn't  the podium be placed to the right of the audience, close to the big screen mounted high on the wall, so that the speaker faces both audience and Board.

I came away thinking, was this Board meeting typical?

I emailed the Board and asked that very same question. But, to date, I haven't received a reply.

I look forward to my next meeting. Then I shall find out.

Update on the terrible twins, Bertie and Fiona

Our two lovable twins, Bertie and Fiona, have settled in..............and they miss the wonderful Matilda, as do I........

But, Jeannine and I knew that she would have been tickled when, as we were watching TV,  Bertie came and lay on my ankles and Fiona cuddled up in Jeannine's lap.

It was a wonderful moment - for the four us.

They are SO lively, inquisitive, energetic and loving....................and have the sharpest claws and little teeth!!!!!!

Flippin' 'eck! Yesterday, I read that the Queen is broke......and today, worse news: the pubs are disappearing!!

SAVING an ENDANGERED SPECIES: The PUB

NYT February 17th

LONDON — One by one, the pubs are disappearing in Hampstead, a jewel-box village of cobbled lanes and Georgian homes that has become one of this city’s most fashionable neighborhoods. The Nags Head has become a realty office. The King of Bohemia is now a clothing shop. The Hare & Hounds has been replaced with an apartment building.

Changing economics and shifting tastes have claimed roughly one out of every five pubs during the last two decades in Britain, and things are growing worse. Since the 2008 financial crisis, 7,000 have shut, leaving some small communities confronting unthinkable: life without a “local,” as pubs are known.

And that has spurred the government into action. New legislation is letting people petition to have a pub designated an “asset of community value,” a status that provides a degree of protection from demolition and helps community groups buy pubs themselves, rather than seeing them get snatched up by real estate developers eager to convert them for other uses or tear them down. Since the Ivy House, a beloved local in south London, became the first to receive the designation last year, roughly 300 others have followed suit.

“The pub, we like to think, is relatively internationally unique, it’s a very traditional thing,” said Brandon Lewis, the Conservative member of Parliament who is the Community Pubs Minister, an office that underscores the special place pubs occupy in British life. “In many communities they are really important, not just because it’s where people come together, but it will be the focal point for fund-raising for the community, for the local football club, for the dance class, for the moms’ coffee morning.”

Still, the traditional pub is being squeezed as never before, even after George Osborne, chancellor of the Exchequer, reversed course last March and reduced the tax paid on every pint of beer, by a penny. Antismoking laws are keeping smokers away. Cut-price beer for sale at supermarkets is eating into business. In London, the upward spiral of real estate prices has made pubs attractive targets for developers.

And then there is a cultural shift on this isle of bitter, porter and stout: People in Britain are drinking about 23 percent less beer than a decade ago, according to the British Beer and Pub Association. Pubs have been trying to take up the slack with other beverages and expanded food menus.

On another level, Britain’s pub trouble is also an echo of the deregulatory fervor of Margaret Thatcher. In the 1980s, her Conservative government broke up the near monopoly that brewers held over pubs. But the breweries were replaced by large, independent companies that have since gobbled up a little over half of the nation’s pubs. These “pubcos” often own the land, determine what beer pubs can sell and can charge high rents. Some amassed their holdings by going into debt and are now selling to the highest bidder to capitalize on their real estate. A proposed parliamentary motion last month decried the profit margins of one pubco, Punch Taverns, calling them “wholly unacceptable.”

“Large pub companies own a lot of property, and there’s a temptation to sell some of those properties off for a quick monetary gain,” said Neil Walker of the Campaign for Real Ale, an advocacy group. Many pubs have been turned into residences or supermarkets, he said.

One battleground here in Hampstead is at the Old White Bear. A handsome, two-chimney building of red brick, the Bear has occupied its spot on Well Road for three centuries. Peter O’Toole, it is said, had to be carried out occasionally in his younger, wilder days. Elizabeth Taylor, who was born in Hampstead, and Richard Burton, who owned a home here, were also visitors, patrons say. Recent guests are said to include Boy George and Liam Gallagher.

But after the Old White Bear was bought by a group of developers through a company on the Isle of Man, 2,000 people signed a petition to save the pub. The Bear has been declared an asset of community value, and the local council has so far refused permission to turn it into a six-bedroom house. Even so, the pub closed on Feb. 2. With the developers determined to fight, the Bear’s future is uncertain.

Guy Wingate, a longtime patron, pointed to Hampstead’s fallen locals. While the village has other pubs, the Old White Bear, he said, had become the center of his community.

“You rip the heart out of that, and we’re either all going to wander the streets like zombies or stay indoors and not see each other ever again,” Mr. Wingate said over coffee at Cafe Rouge, which used to be the Bird in Hand.

The last night of the Old White Bear, a patron was carried in on the shoulders of six staff members. A bartender mimicked an air raid siren. A Husky dozed on the floor. There were speeches and toasts. Jennie Smith, smoking outside, said that she and another regular — her chocolate Labrador, Bentley — were devastated. Bentley had stopped by earlier for a bit of roast beef. As the crowd spilled through the rooms, another patron rose to recite an ode to the Old White Bear.

“Let’s be brave, let’s be bold, let’s believe in this White Bear of old,” he said. “Raise a glass and say, we close tonight, to return another day.”

Hey, you Brits, take a look at this in today's NYT!!

LONDON — The British queen is down to her last pennies. Well, actually, her last millions of pennies.

Last month, the Public Accounts Committee — Parliament’s watchdog on public spending — published a damning survey of the state of the royal finances. The queen had spent down her “reserve fund,” a savings account built up by years of surplus public subsidy, to “a historically low level” of only £1 million ($1.6 million), from £35.3 million in 2001.

Trying to make sense of the royal finances is like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. Here’s the puzzle: Queen Elizabeth II is often described, by some measures, as one of the richest people in the world. Among her private property is Balmoral Castle, her residence in the Scottish Highlands, which was purchased, together with a 50,000-acre estate, by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria in 1848. Queen Elizabeth also owns stud farms, personal art and fine jewelry. According to Forbes magazine, her personal worth is $500 million.

If the queen is so wealthy, how can she be strapped for cash? In 2010, it emerged that the queen had even privately applied to a government fund normally reserved for low-income families to help with Buckingham Palace’s heating bills. Turning the request down, a government official commented, “I also feel a bit uneasy about the probable adverse press coverage if the palace were given a grant at the expense of, say, a hospital.” Why is the queen reduced to acting as if she lived in public housing?

The short answer is that she does live in public housing — just in an exceptionally grand manner.

The queen does not own Buckingham Palace; the nation does. It follows that, wealthy as she is, the queen sees no reason to pay for the upkeep of the palace, since she lives there by virtue of her public duties.

Behind this tussle over who pays for what is the fundamental ambiguity of a parliamentary democracy headed by a hereditary monarch. This historic anomaly is the key to unraveling the mysteries of the royal finances. It explains how we can have a queen who is privately so very rich, yet who publicly pleads poverty.

The modern muddle began in 1760. King George III found himself £3 million in debt — a colossal sum, equivalent to more than £500 million in today’s money. To extricate himself, he surrendered to the government the management of, and revenues from, most of his property. In return, he received a fixed annual payment, known as the Civil List.

This was, in essence, how the British government subsidized the royal household for 250 years — until 2012, when Parliament abolished the Civil List and replaced it with the Sovereign Grant. Ostensibly, this was to rationalize the royal finances: The Civil List was the main source of state funding for the royal family, yet it was supplemented by a host of other grants — to cover palace maintenance, communications and travel costs. The Royal Yacht Britannia, for instance, was separately funded to the tune of £11 million a year, until it was retired by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997 as a cost-cutting measure.

The Sovereign Grant was designed to sweep all that away. Rather than the queen’s receiving the Civil List and a suite of subsidies, the level of the grant is simply set at a 15 percent cut of the profits from the Crown Estate. It is a remunerative new arrangement, which projects an income steadily rising to £37.9 million this year, from £36.1 million for 2013.

Despite its name, the Crown Estate is a vast property portfolio that belongs to the crown as an embodiment of the state, and not to the reigning monarch as an individual. Among the assets held by the nation that the queen enjoys in her role as the sovereign are Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, the world-renowned royal art collection and the Crown Jewels.

The queen could, if she so desired, sell Balmoral Castle tomorrow, as it is her private property. But she could not sell the Crown Jewels; she has no legal title to them.

If the monarchy were abolished tomorrow, Buckingham Palace and the royal art collection would, as before, be public property. But the queen would not be obliged — as the humorist Sue Townsend imagined in her 1992 novel “The Queen and I” — to live in a slum: Her personal wealth would enable her to keep company with Russian oligarchs and Saudi royalty indefinitely.

The Sovereign Grant seemed to simplify things, but it did nothing to resolve the constitutional fudge. Many within the royal family clearly look upon the Crown Estate as their personal property. And in directly linking royal income to the estate, the grant appeared to some to legitimize the monarch’s claim to it.

And there are still hidden subsidies. The Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, for example, are huge property holdings “held in trust” for the sovereign and the heir to the throne, respectively, and are distinct from the Crown Estate. Last year, the queen received £12.7 million from the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Prince of Wales £19.1 million from the Duchy of Cornwall. And both were exempt from business taxes.

Such “lost revenues,” argues the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, should be regarded as state handouts to the queen. On this basis, Republic estimates the total cost of the monarchy to the taxpayer is more than £200 million a year.

In the background to such a lavish public subsidy of the monarchy is the austerity imposed by the government since 2010, a program that has generated considerable popular anger. There is hostility, too, toward the social privilege of government ministers.

Yet, little of this fury has spilled over into outrage about royal funding. Fewer than one in five Britons wants a republic, a figure that has not changed for half a century. In contrast, a poll last year found that 45 percent of the British public showed “strong support” for the monarchy, up from 27 percent in 2006.

For royalists, who point to how the economy benefits from tourism through royal pageantry, the monarchy provides value for money. And it is better, they say, to have a nonpolitical head of state who can unite the nation, rather than an elected politician who would divide it. For some, the very idea that M.P.’s should scrutinize the queen’s finances verges on impertinence.

Yet the notion of the monarchy as an apolitical institution is preposterous. Its very existence proclaims that an accident of birth matters more than the democratic will. If the royalists have a point, however, it may be this: Their contempt for democracy captures a public mood that is deeply cynical about politicians, who are seen as venal and corrupt. Some suggest that when Queen Elizabeth is eventually replaced by the far less popular Charles, support for the monarchy will plummet. But even when rage at the Windsors was at its height, in the wake of their cack-handed response to the death of Princess Diana in 1997, there was little enthusiasm for a republican alternative.

In the past, reverence for the monarchy was rooted in a sense of deference and an acceptance of hierarchy. Today, deference has been replaced by cynicism — but as long as the public despises politicians and favors the royals, one of the richest families in the world will continue to live luxuriously at the taxpayers’ expense.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and the author of “From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Aftermath.”