I’ve written before about the so-called ‘Miracle Mineral Supplement’, or MMS: a substance that is no more, & no less, than industrial bleach. Regardless of its actual nature, MMS continues to be touted as a panacea for just about every ill known to mankind. The other day Orac posted a piece on MMS, & so […]
Continue readingYear: 2012
every major’s terrible (apologies to gilbert & sullivan)
I have spent a lot of time lately advising students on their programs of study. (This is one of the reasons my blogging has been sparse of late: I have been filling in while we are ‘between’ registrars & as a result have almost nil ‘spare’ time.) One of the things we often talk about […]
Continue readingdoes the swiss government *really* support homeopathy?
Recently, while lurking at Orac’s place, I noticed a couple of comments about a report by the Swiss government that apparently endorsed homeopathy. The Natural News website is having a ball with this, with its author saying things like [t]his breakthrough report affirmed that homeopathic treatment is both effective and cost-effective and that homeopathyic treatment […]
Continue readingbeauty in simplicity – a guide to basic critical thinking
Via my colleague Daniel Laughlin comes this link to what he describes as "a simple & elegant description of critical thinking." It’s a visual description, not a whole bunch of words, & strikes me as being a Really Useful Resource for classroom discussion around critical thinking & the nature of science. Enjoy 🙂
Continue readinghow much do we value our teachers?
I’ve been following the various media reports on class sizes and performance pay for teachers with considerable interest. This afternoon I was sent a link to an article in the National Business Review – the article itself was quite… interesting (surely the number of teachers in this country hasn’t increased from 10-11,000 to 52,500 over […]
Continue readingsymphony of science: the world of the dinosaurs
I occasionally (very occasionally, right now, with my workload the way it is) watch the Symphony of Science series on youtube. Today I took a few minutes & watched "The world of the dinosaurs", which is quite good** in a techno- sort of way. Why am I mentioning this? Because when I was taking part […]
Continue readingmusings on national primary science week
As I mentioned in my last post, this week is National Primary Science Week, intended to provide science-focused professional development for primary school teachers and competitions, activities,and resources to support science teaching. I’d been asked if I’d contribute to the local program in Hamilton, & so today I trotted off to Berkeley Intermediate Normal School […]
Continue readingthe ero on primary school science: ‘should do better’
The Education Review Office’s report on primary school science is all over the news today: here at Yahoo, for example. You’ll find the original paper, Science in the New Zealand Curriculum: Years 5 to 8, on the ERO website. It does not fill me with joy and the following quotes from the report’s Overview should […]
Continue readingliterate primates?
A while back now, I wrote a brief piece commenting on the ability of at least some chimpanzees to recognise numbers. So it didn’t come as a huge surprise to hear that members of a baboon troop could distinguish between ‘real’ words and random strings of letters. Yes, really. A group of psychologists led by Jonathan […]
Continue readingscientists *do* have a sense of humour :-)
Scientists, like everyone else, have a sense of humour. (It’s just that sometimes their ‘in-jokes’ may come across as somewhat incomprehensible.) And taxonomy seems to offer fertile ground to indulge that wit. What else can you think, when there’s a tiny tiny snail with the genus name Ittibittium; a fly called Pieza kake (say it […]
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