The Hiatus

It has been quite a while since my last post. I've been on a short hiatus because of some changes in our family situation. Specifically, I was offered a temporary contract position outside the house.

The temporary situation, as it turns out, is more temporary than I had hoped. I had hoped for about two years worth of work, but the DoD contract has apparently been terminated earlier. The political aspects of this are interesting, and I may write about them at a later date.

In the interim, my girls switched from home school to private school. We wanted the transition to be as easy as possible, and I was absolutely dead set against public schools. We found a small Roman Catholic parish school, Our Lady of Lourdes. As much as I am a fan of home schooling, I still must say that this school has been tremendous! Small class sizes, a really great group of teachers and administrators, a conservative culture (not in a political sense, but in terms of dress and behavior) - I highly recommend this school to anyone in the Denver area. At such time we return to home schooling, we will still financially support this school.

Hopefully our schedule will stabilize over the next several months, and I will start posting regularly again.

Cruising the Chernobyl "Dead Zone"

Our children are too young to remember Chernobyl, the town destroyed by the worst nuclear accident to ever take place.  It is worth remembering; poor technology, dangerous tests of equipment, and human error created a situation that killed many and left a large area uninhabitable.  A government's attempts to disguise what had happened caused many more deaths. 

This young lady takes us on a sobering tour of the dead zone, with some history and lots of pictures.  A very interesting site, and it can serve as an opener to a longer discussion with your kids about energy, risk, and human nature.

An Ancient Weapon

Slinging.org has an array of interesting information on slings - you know, David and Goliath kind of stuff. 

Young students and hunters may have an interest both practical and historical.

Correlation vs. Causation

One of the arguments students will encounter repeatedly is that of causation and correlation.  Whether the argument is about Anthropogenic Global Warming, or minority incarceration rates, or gun control, or smoking, or whatever subject, all too often students (and voters, and taxpayers) fall prey to this logical fallacy.

The blog that this graph links to concerns drug discovery and the pharmacology industry.  The problem of understanding correlation and causation is universal.  Clearly, one would have a hard time finding a logical connection between the importation of fruit and automotive fatalities (unless the fruit in question was the banana, and the old "slipped on a banana peel" joke could be put into play).  But, according to these statistics carefully graphed, there is a direct correlation between the two.

Students must constantly be on guard when presented with such compelling evidence.  Correlation does not imply causation - a mantra for the coming decade.