{"id":1043,"date":"2009-05-21T16:54:42","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T20:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1043"},"modified":"2009-06-27T13:27:59","modified_gmt":"2009-06-27T17:27:59","slug":"this-that-the-grumpy-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1043","title":{"rendered":"This & that, the grumpy edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

— First of all, since I’m a part-time college student slowly working my way toward becoming a science teacher here in the Sunshine State, I’m particularly irritated by this bit of news<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The state Board of Education more than tripled the fees for teacher certification tests, from $150 to $480.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gee, thanks. I can just feel the love you have for teachers, Florida.<\/p>\n

— Here is a story online at Seed magazine <\/a>written by NCSE’s Josh Rosenau concerning a looming battle over science textbook content in Texas. It’s an OK story, but what bothers me is:<\/p>\n

… my colleagues and I worked hard to influence the Texas School Board over the months of hearings, providing them with a statement signed by 54 scientific and educational societies opposing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153any effort to undermine the teaching of biological evolution and related topics.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We worked with local activists to organize constituents and political honchos who educated board members about the importance of evolution to science education.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, NCSE folks were invaluable in helping out in Texas. But “we worked with local activists” is the only shoutout to all the hard-working Texas citizens-for-science-type folks? I’m sorry, Josh, but that’s kinda insulting, in my humble opinion<\/span>. [edited to add: As explained in the comments, it was the editors who decided to slice out mention of specific groups due to space limitation. Sorry, Josh.] I spoke with Eugenie Scott about Texas events when she was here in Florida earlier this month. She had a lot of positive things to say about the dedication, knowledge, expertise and connections the local folks brought to the table. Much more credit needs to given to them.<\/p>\n

— If you are heading for some water fun, watch out for the critters<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The more that Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s boaters know about manatees and how to operate their vessels safely in waters that are shared by manatees, the better the chance we have of reducing the number of watercraft injuries and mortalities for this endangered species.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— And some\u00c2\u00a0critters of the air deserve respect as well: Ospreys. They know what makes a relationship work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Researchers know ospreys mate for life but take separate vacations.<\/p>\n

“Some have suggested that’s how they can mate for life,” he says with a chuckle. The birds migrate separately and the males return to their breeding grounds a few days to a week before the females.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— You might not want to tick off a mockingbird. They hold grudges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

— Animal evolution gets a bit too much attention. Some University of Florida researchers would rather figure out the mysteries of plant evolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— First of all, since I’m a part-time college student slowly working my way toward becoming a science teacher here in the Sunshine State, I’m particularly irritated by this bit of news. The state Board of Education more than tripled … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-gP","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":753,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=753","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":0},"title":"Importance of science lab design","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A Florida high school science teacher and FCS member recently asked for some help concerning a possible new science lab at her school. With her permission, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m posting her concerns here for y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all to mull over. It's been said that our science wings will be torn down and rebuilt elsewhere\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2823,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2823","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":1},"title":"Truth in Textbooks?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Before I do a news roundup of all the articles published about the horrible new Florida instructional materials law, it's important to note that this issue will only get more heated throughout the year. The Department of Education will soon launch its science instructional materials review and selection process. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '17"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '17","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Textbooks-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":349,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=349","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":2},"title":"Evolution: it’s on the test. Someone should tell the school board members!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Northwest Florida Daily News published a story about evolution in the new draft of the state science standards. (Make sure to click through all three pages of it.) There are a lot of positive, reasonable quotes in the story, such as: Evolution is already tested on the ACT and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":976,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=976","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":3},"title":"And in other news …","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"News dump time. -- Should public school teachers have tenure? This story in the St. Petersburg Times points out how hard it is to fire a horrible teacher. What interests me about this story? Evolution, of course. When teachers earned workplace protections in the early 20th century, tenure was intended\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=976#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2910,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2910","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":4},"title":"Eugenie Scott, Brandon Haught, Bertha Vazquez in Orlando this month","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm reproducing here an edited notice that the National Center for Science Education sent out recently about a central Florida event coming up: NCSE's founding executive director Eugenie C. Scott will be speaking on \"Race, Science, and Society\" at 4:30 p.m. on October 21, at the FREEFLO Freethought Florida Conference,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2019,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2019","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":5},"title":"Details emerge about textbook bill","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As I've noted before, there is a bill in the state legislature that proposes to turn review and selection of all public school textbooks over to local school districts, removing state-level government from the process completely. In today's Tampa Bay Times there is now a more in-depth story: Bill aims\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}