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University of California Sued Over Creationism

I picked this one up from the Associated Press today...

The Associated Press
Saturday, August 27, 2005; 2:03 PM

LOS ANGELES -- A group representing California religious schools has filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints.

The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evolution. Other rejected courses include "Christianity's Influence in American History."

According to the lawsuit, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta was told its courses were rejected because they use textbooks printed by two Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books.

Wendell E. Bird, a lawyer for the association, said the policy violates the rights of students and religious schools.

"A threat to one religion is a threat to all," he said.

UC spokeswoman Ravi Poorsina said she could not comment, because the university had not been served with the lawsuit. Still, she said the university has a right to set course requirements.

"These requirements were established after careful study by faculty and staff to ensure that students who come here are fully prepared with broad knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed," Poorsina.

Why are Time and Task Management So Hard?

My boss, Steve (why are there so many Steves?), recently inspired me to re-read David Allen's Getting Things Done.  Allen has a point that applies perfectly to me: I don't get stressed out about having to do things, I get stressed out about having to remember things.  His solution is equally obvious - write stuff down.  Whenever you think of something that needs doing, either do it now or write it down.  Review your big list of stuff weekly.

This all works very well for an individual.  For an organization to be effective, it should follow the same principles.  Write everything down in a place where everyone can see it.  At work, we use an in-house ticketing system that parallels many, many similar systems in IT departments across the world.  Basically everyone has a TO DO list.  You can add stuff to someone's list, finish stuff on your list, or move stuff from your list to someone else's.  When a task is done, it goes back to the person who created it to check. 

It's simple, and it works amazingly well.  A manager can very quickly determine if an employee is overloaded with work and sort things out accordingly.  We have a simple 1-6 numeric priority system that tells everyone the difference between background tasks, regular tasks and "do this right f*cking now" tasks.  More importantly, we don't lose stuff.  If we decide not to do something, someone has to put their name on it and say so.  We only lose stuff that isn't in the system.

On del.icio.us

I finally got around to setting up a del.icio.us account today.  You can access my bookmarks here.  Expect to see a lot with the tag "spectroscopy" in the near future, as I'm doing a web bibliography for JCU.

Light Pollution in Toronto

I have been working on my course at JCU, and one of our tasks has been to estimate the orientation of the Milky Way with respect to the Earth's orbit.

The obvious way to do this is to look at the Milky Way.  That's impossible in Toronto, and for a LONG way out.  At my home downtown, the limiting magnitude is between 0 and 1, depending on how directly you're forced to look into bright lights.  My home is something of a pathological case, though, as the club just down the street likes to shine searchlights into the night.  A more realistic case would be midtown Toronto (I am using Yonge and Eglinton), where most bright stars can be seen clearly.  The Milky Way is completely invisible, though.

I travelled to the suburb of Aurora, Ontario (about 40km north of the city limit, or one hour of travel by train in rush hour) and the skies were not substantially better than midtown.  You would think that, this far out, in a small city of 40,000 with unbuilt land all around, we would be able to find dark skies.  You would be wrong.  The Milky Way was still invisible to the naked eye and at the very limit of vision in binoculars.

Two interesting sites about light pollution in Southern Ontario:

• A 1976 paper by Richard Berry shows a light pollution map.  Anything within an hour's drive of Toronto is very poor.
• A more modern sky brightness map of the GTA.

Ontario does have several dark sky preserves designed to maintain a few places where human eyes will be able to see the universe.  This is a good start.  What really needs to happen, though, is for cities like Toronto to install simple shades on outdoor lights to keep them directed downward.  If they were reflective, the bulbs could also be replaced with a lower wattage, thus saving energy costs.

Sometimes it's the little things that matter the most.

Personal Update

This post is just a shout-out to those from all over the world that read this blog to keep tabs on me.  I haven't been posting much, so I thought it would be in order. 

It's been summer here, and it has been the hottest one I can remember!  I've been spending a great deal of time lying out on the beach at the Toronto Islands and enjoying the sun... very outdoorsy, very different.  I've also been in the depths of a tech burnout.  Working at a software company and working on my Master's online has made a strong mental association between "computer" and "work."  I'm just not blogging or using them for fun as much anymore, and that may be a good thing.  Especially now, during the summer, where I can just leave it all at home and walk down the street and go see real people.

How novel for a geek!

(By the way, if anyone knows how to make Cantor's Diagonalization Proof work on the rationals, myself and Simon at work would love to know.  Yes, Erik, I'm looking at you.)

Using RFID Properly

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article on RFID passports in the US that is worth a read.  In particular, he's satisfied with a simple scheme to prevent unauthorized access to the chips.  Each chip is encrypted with a key that's printed (in an optical-reader-friendly format) inside the passport.  The chips are now as secure as paper --- you have to open the book to read it!

How Big Is Your Mushroom Cloud?

Boing Boing ran a great story on this Google Maps hack.  It links a high-yield explosion simulator (think nuclear) with Google Maps, so you can see the area of destruction in question.  You can key in your own latitude / longitude and get the satelitte view and everything.

Definitely the most creative Google Maps hack I've seen to date.