I am an excellent (written) test-taker. I am good at educated guessing. I am (or used to be at least) also really good at memorizing. I educated-guessed my way through the final exam of a biology course for which I had skipped almost all the classes to score a B. I could stay up the night (or two nights in a row) before an organic chemistry exam ( Read more... )

I heard a talk a few months ago here from one Professor Mary Poplin from Claremont (whom, when I opened e-mails about her, I kept confusing with Mary Poppins) partly regarding her studies on high performing teachers in low performing schools ( Read more... )

This Thursday and Friday, my University held another Veritas Forum. The speaker was Os Guinness, an author and social critic.

On Thursday, the title of his talk was “Is God Relevant in the Public Square? Living with our deepest differences in a world of exploding pluralism.”

( a long & detailed lecture review )

I was reading on nikkijeanne04's blog the other day about how she and her husband are going to start using sign language[1] with their new child, I. [2] This made me happy.

In discussing this with her, she indicated that she and her husband were also going to not use made-up words, i.e. "baby talk" with her. This also made me happy ( Read more... )

If I ever (against very high odds to the contrary) have a genetically related child, I am going to definitely teach him or her sign language as early as I possibly can.

My good friend izaaksmom did this with her son I., and I have always been intrigued and impressed by this.

Part of the reason I have no desire for having my own genetic children is related ( Read more... )

Some of you may recall an entry of mine a few years ago in which I described research that shows that the dogma of biology that says that who we are comes primarily from our genes is lacking. A new field of "epigenetics" has been started to study changes in expression of genes as opposed to simply whether genes are there or not. (In other words, ( Read more... )

I learned about a club started by a young boy named McKay Hatch this morning. It is called the No Cussing Club. He started it at age 14 at his school in an attempt to fight peer pressure ( Read more... )

The word "ignorance" is another word for which I wish there were separate, more precise words in the English language.[1] (Other examples are "love"[2] and "beauty"[3].)

( a brief analysis of one particular modern usage )

My good friend daschwartz once again forwarded on to me an article to trigger a post here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/07/16/do-pre-meds-really-need-that-year-of-organic-chemistry/I have mixed feelings about the article ( Read more... )

This entry is especially for my readers who are in grad school as scientists -- that vast number of you.

My good friend daschwartz sent me an article from the Journal of Cell Science. It was not a research article, but rather a short essay on an aspect of science education I had not really considered ( Read more... )