You Call That a Defense of Marriage?

Anyone how has taken a class from me knows that their arguments for anything will be parsed for quality.  Sloppy arguments come from sloppy thinking and sloppy thinkers make poor scientists, politicians, and citizens.  Sometimes I wonder where my students learned such sloppy thinking.

Today I heard a news report about the arguments being put forward before the court looking into the constitutionality of California's proposition 8 which is supposed to "defend marriage" by defining marriage as being between one man and one woman only.  My position on the issue does not matter as the point of today's blog is ineffectual (and unintentionally humorous) arguments.

It appears from the radio news piece that the argument by the "defense of marriage" lawyers is that the purpose of marriage is to create children and raise them in a household containing a mother and father.  Ignoring the circular argument, this view also allows for the invalidation of numerous marriages between heterosexuals.

Based on this argument, people how can't have children for medical reasons can't married or are not married.  If one partner or the other has rendered themselves incapable of having children, they dissolved the marriage, with potential legal liability for breaking the marriage up.

Hey guys, wife reaches menopause and kids out of the house, you don't need to divorce.  If she can't have kids the "defense of marriage" folks have just dissolved your marriage.  Marry that 23-year old without alimony to the former wife.  You will be defending marriage because you can now start family 2.0.

Be it our national dialogues or our teaching of the next generation such obviously flawed arguments should not be allowed to stand, and should be ridiculed publicly.  If I were the judge I would have to find against the "defense of marriage" argument with the admonition that gay marriage has nothing to do with the decision.  If the "making babies" argument is the best argument they can come up with they should pay all the court costs for wasting the time and money involved in the case.

Getting back to the pedagogical point, in class this means that my students get one point for making an argument but don't get the rest, for making a logically invalid argument.

T.S. Hall

Techno- fixes

I have a very quiet class this semester.  These folks don't talk to one another and it's been hard getting them to respond to questions is class.  I thought a little levity might break down the walls and open the lines of communication.  God knows my attempts at humor so far have not worked.

Today in class I noted the alternate application of Clemmemsen Reduction conditions in TV and movies where hydrogen gas is generated with acid and metal, as when the steel wool pad is place in a cup of acid in the microwave on a timer.  The bad guy enters, the timer starts, the hydrogen in the microwave explodes destroying the room and killing the bad guy, who is felled by a flying toaster strudel.

Silence!  Not even a chuckle!

Thus an i-phone app or Powerpoint app development opportunity for you technical folks out there.  I want a cricket app, where with a push of a button I can have the sound of crickets emit from my i-touch or my laptop when my class queries (or jokes) are met with silence.  As an improved app we could offer other noises from nature: chickens clucking, doves cooing, whale song, horses neighing, cows mooing, jackasses braying.  OK, never mind that last example. They might think the instructor had gone back to lecturing.

T.S. Hall

No Gripe Wednesday!?

I suspect that Rep. Emanuel Cleaves of Arizona has had his fill of Sarcastic Wednesdays. He is trying to get a bill into congress to create Complaint-Free Wednesdays. Well in the spirit of Thanksgiving maybe I should take note of a few things I am thankful for this semester.

1) There are a few really good students in my classes, but more importantly there are a bunch of average students who are hanging in there and striving to become more than average.

2) Sure research is part of the institutional mission, but without outside funding I still need to buy reagents out of my own pocket. And just as I realized that bromine is a regulated substance that you can't purchase on a personal credit card an unexpected angle donated to the university a kilobuck for my research program. A great unforeseen gift with great timing.

3) While research can be a struggle I still love the puzzles of the lab and the technical work involved. Every once in a while I see something with the beauty that is found in the details and in everything falling into place in a nearly perfect or truly perfect way.

We live in interesting times. Sarcasm and griping may help us get through the day, but we must take the opportunity to fix our system ourselves, and be thankful for the opportunity.

Happy Thanksgiving

T.S. Hall

Cutting Edge Science and The Oldest Profession

OK Profies, the next time the grad students are complaining about their stipends you might remind them how lucky they are to not be in grad school in Britain.

In case you missed the news, the author of blog and memoirs that have become the cable TV show, "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" has come clean and identified herself as a PhD research scientist who worked her way through grad school with a night job.

Given the laughable salaries for MS graduate students at MCUs, I wonder if this explains why I can never find my research students when I go into the lab looking for them? And the fishnets hanging by the lab coats!?

T.S. Hall

Oh GATTACA

(A Late Sarcastic Wednesday)

As I navigated the highways on my way to work this morning I heard a story on the radio about the "Bad Driver Gene". Apparently our colleagues at the University of California Irvine have identified a protein called brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) which is secreted in the area of the brain associated with with a task at hand, like driving. According to this very limited study about thirty percent of Americans have a gene variant which they have associated with bad driving, due to limited secretion of BDNF.

According to the researcher, Dr. Steve Cramer of UCI,

"These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away."

Now, I will leave it to others to warn of the consequences of this discovery on insurance rates and to opine about banning certain people from behind the wheel for the sake of public safety. We in academia will need to get ahead of the curve on this one. People who make errors from the get-go and who forget more of what they learned after time away sit before us in every class. I see two potential directions this story could go for us.

Option one is that in the future Low BDNF will become a recognized learning disability. The consequences for faculty will be requirements to adjust curricula accordingly. With thirty percent of Americans suffering we will need to stop expecting students to know material which they have spent some time away from. No more prerequisite courses!

Option two is that we genetically pre-test potential students and limit public support for those, that owing to genetic predisposition, are less likely to succeed in education or careers that require BDNF.

On the plus side, Biochemists with friends in Education, there's a couple of grants in this. Let's correlate BDNF genetic mutation to major and alternately to grade received in courses or to graduation rate.

T.S. Hall

Timing is everything

I got back from class this morning to find the daily e-mail from The Scientist including an article titled "Can Unresponsive Brains Learn".

Based on the level of class participation this morning, I guess we will find out on next week's exam.

Furlough Friday

You would think that I would be posting more given that my campus was on furlough last week. But as I am trying to finish up my sabbatical I violated the rules and worked on Friday, albeit on another campus.

I Know! Some of you are now angry at me for demonstrating to the state that they can just cut my pay and I will accept it. Sorry, but if I am going to spend future furlough days working on my vitae and looking for another position I need some more publications.

The entire furlough foolishness as taken on an absurd quality that makes my head spin. The faculty have been told that if they go to campus and are caught working in their offices or labs on a furlough day they will be charged with trespassing on state property and will be escorted from campus. We have also been told that we may not check e-mail or voicemail on furlough days. I wonder if the university will just shut down the e-mail server and cut off the phone service. This seems more effective then making the Chairperson monitor the faculty. Plus, if the Chairperson is monitoring our accounts to make sure we are not checking e-mail are they not working on a furlough day?

The university has instructed us to not work on furlough days, but to assign work to the students to make up for the loss of class time. But don't I end up grading that work? I guess so long as I don't grade it on a furlough day it's OK with the university. I sure hope the lab students don't get busted in an unfortunate misunderstanding resulting from their performing organic synthesis in their kitchens on the furlough lab days.

Perhaps I should spend the next furlough day organizing a on-line job fair to bring together campuses outside California with California faculty who are ready to bring their expertise to other college and university systems. I am just saying, if I can't work at my job I have to find something useful to do.

TS Hall

I Owe You One Blog Post

Due to the inability of the author to budget their word usage, the author regrets the necessity to issue this warrant good for one blog post plus six percent additional words to be paid in full by October 2009.

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When frustrated some people drink. I get sarcastic, which annoys most people I know. So I try to clamp it down, which frustrates me! To eliminate this spiral I have decided to limit sarcastic posting to Wednesdays. After all, what better day. You have had two days of work to build your frustration and the end of the week looks far away.

T.S. Hall