Sacrifices for the Dragons

Honolulu Zoo: Komodo Dragons

What amazing stuff! Ursula K. Le Guinn wrote fictional books about the world of Earthsea where dragons and people have a common ancestor. It turns out that the people of the Island of Komodo actually believe the same thing. You have to listen to the whole report, but I am amazed at how ingeniously the culture developed a mechanism for protecting themselves from the Komodo Dragons. These are Giant 10 foot lizards that can easily kill a human, but for decades and perhaps hundreds of years this cultural belief that the dragons and humans have a common ancestor caused the villagers to share prey and goats with the dragons thus preventing the dragons from getting hungry enough to attack the humans. 10 years ago the Nature Conservancy says the islanders shouldn't be "domesticating" the dragons and now there are regular attacks. Pretty funny how our solutions mess things up again.

Check out the link here: http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/20448

Some body really measured this??

Ok, I have had to type in the little misshapen words and letters on many websites, but I never even stopped to think about how much time it was taking. This guy not only figured out how much time it was taking but a way to make use of the time. All in all really a good idea.

Check it out at here:

• Play
  
• Link to NPR.ORG Story
  

Alarmism is Real!!

I don't want to be an alarmist, but I am alarmed by an increasing trend to alarmism in our society. People are panicking for any and no reason whatsoever. Yes, I do know that bacon will kill me. I also know that when people drink to much alcohol they sometimes misjudge the attractiveness of others. However, I don't think we can panic about everything. I think the reason we do panic is simple. Information overload. I think there is another interesting phenomenon related to Alarmism and that is Mental Paralysis

Alarmism
Many people today seem determined to stir up an emotional response about anything they can. Case in point internet safety:


Now, if you watch this video, you and I can both agree that this would alarm the #@!! out of us if it was our daughter. It alarms me and it isn't my daughter, but research is showing more and more that the kids that are involved in meeting face to face with people from the internet are often fully aware of what they are doing. I guess the video is pretty accurate because the young lady in question seems to be trying to get attention and succeeding but just not showing judgement about what she is posting. I taught Junior High for 9 years and honestly, 95% of my students were never a problem or concern at all. The 5% made life really difficult, but most of the students were either simply good or actually really exceptional. We see the same attempts to stir up emotional responses to everything from Green House Gases, to Identity Theft, to salmonella on our tomatoes. The trouble is if we see every risk that is being shouted from the rooftops as not only legitimat but critical we become victims of the other disease caused by information overload

Mental paralysis
We all have so many warnings shouted at us that eventually we become like the townspeople in the old fable about the Boy who cried Wolf. Most people consider this a fable about learning not to lie, but it can also be applied the other way. It is important for us not to ignore warnings. The trouble we have is that we have all had so many and so many conflicting warnings that it is impossible to know what to do.

Case in point: The Atkins Diet (with all respect to Dr. Atkins and those for whome this has worked) We were all warned for years about the dangers of red meat, cholesterol and fatty foods, but the Atkins diet warns of the risks of high carb foods. If we read and accepted all the warnings about food none of us would ever eat again.

Another case in point: Photovoltaic Solar Panels. These are touted as a great potential solution to energy problems, but as soon as somebody claimed their benefits someone else was out clamoring the warning that the resources needed to mine the minerals to build them would outstrip the benefits. What are we to do?

Well I don't really know because mental paralysis has already set in and I've been warned that excessive blogging can lead to athlete's foot and carpal tunnel syndrome

TTFN

I could really use some of that.

With all due respect to Scott Adams and www.dilbert.com. I didn't want to post this I would have preferred to embed or link, but I couldn't find out how (even after extensive minutes of searching) Anyway, I could really use some of this stuff.

What a week

I have had a hugely busy week. I spent Monday teaching PhotoShop Elements which I have never used. Jared owes me pizza.

Tuesday and Wednesday I taught up in Logan which was great. What a wonderful bunch of people. You can look for what we did on TeacherTube. I posted a new internet safety video and my Weathering video.

Thursday and Friday I attended the Classroom 2.0 conference in Salt Lake City. It was an exceptional conference and I facilitated one session. I probably talked too much during the other sessions so I offer my apologies for my over enthusiasm to the other participants.

Any way all in all a good week.