Wheat-dogg’s world
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Wordpress users, beware! Upgrading to the latest version (2.6) may break your admin login. It happened to me.

In the past, I have had no problems updating WP. You upload the files, update the database when prompted, and bingo! you’re up and running. Not this time. I did everything by the book (except forgetting to logout first and deactivate plugins), got the login screen, typed in my username and password, and … came right back to the login screen.

Shades of php-nuke!

Since I use Firefox, it was easy to clear cookies and authenticated sessions, the usual culprits in situations like this one, but to no avail. I changed my password, both by using the official WP method and by changing directly in the database. No go.

I checked the WP support forums, tried a different browser, checked error logs, uploaded all the files again (twice!). Same situation.

So I downloaded version 2.5 PC3, uploaded it to my server space, updated the database, and woof! I’m back in business again.

So, if you’re considering updating your site to 2.6, wait until the WP gurus fix this little problem. Not being able to administer your site is a bit of a handicap.

Four Superbowls ago, singer Janet Jackson had a “wardrobe malfunction” that exposed one breast for a microsecond on national TV. The FCC, responding to an Internet-fed viral protest, levied a huge fine — the largest ever — on CBS to punish it for degrading the morals of American society.

An appellate court today reversed the $550,000 fine, effectively telling the FCC to cool its jets.

The Philadelphia court based its decision on two factors, apparently.

First, it ruled that Jackson and fellow performer Justin Timberlake (who had grabbed the part of her costume that “malfunctioned”) were “independent contractors” and not CBS employees. Thus, the court ruled, CBS could not be held responsible for their actions.

Second, it sided with CBS’ opinion that the number of actual viewers protesting the boob flash could not be accurately determined. The FCC said in its brief that there had a record-setting 542,000 protests against the halftime (strip)show. But CBS in its brief noted that 85% of the protests were actually copies of a form letter prepared by single-interest groups.

Or to put it more simply, most of those 542,000 protesters probably weren’t even watching the Superbowl, so Janet’s split-second exposure could not possibly have scarred their tender sensibilities.

Unlike cable and satellite TV outlets, broadcasters like CBS that use the airwaves have to follow strict FCC programming guidelines. The rationale is that cable and sat-TV subscribers choose their programming by paying for it, but broadcast viewers have little control over what they see or hear on the TV.

On the recommendations of other science bloggers, I ordered the book, The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America, by Lauri Lebo. It arrived Tuesday, and wantonly setting aside more pressing tasks, I put some jazz on and starting reading the book.

Since I already had some familiarity with the court case it narrates, the 224 pages went by quickly, and I finished it in an afternoon. [Yes, I do read fast. It’s how I survived four years at Princeton.] For a readable account of the Kitzmiller v. Dover case of 2005, I can recommend none better. Only the PBS Nova episode on the same case matches it for clarity and, yes, drama.

Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., was a watershed lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design in the ninth grade biology classes of the Dover, Penn., Area School District. A conservative, religiously biased school board sought to weaken the teaching of evolution in the schools by requiring teachers (all of whom refused, as it turned out) to read a four-paragraph cautionary statement about the theory of evolution, specifically mentioning Intelligent Design as another explanation for the origin of life.

Lebo’s narrative clearly lays out the religious motivations of the board members, who before hammering out the four paragraphs, had discussed in open meeting the need to bring creationism into the science curriculum. (Those same members later stated, under oath, that they had never used the creationism and accused the two reporters covering the board meetings of fabricating the statements. During the trial, however, it became clear the reporters were in fact correct.)

The snippet lasted only a few seconds, and I’ll bet most viewers didn’t even notice the mistake.

It was during a CNN Special Investigation Report on food safety. The camera supposedly was trained on the Sun as it rises above the horizon. Diagonally. Toward the top left of the screen. In California.

Well, it cannot have possibly happened, not in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. Clearly the cinematographer was just running a sunset backwards to create a “sunrise,” a geographically wrong sunrise. Here’s why.

The Sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, no matter where you live, because the entire Earth rotates in the same direction. The path of the Sun across the sky, however, depends on your latitude, because the Earth is round.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, facing east, you will see the Sun rise over the horizon and follow a diagonal path toward the upper right (also known as the southern sky). At sunset, facing west, the Sun will slowly dive toward the horizon from the upper left (still the southern sky). The angle of that path relative to the horizon matches your latitude. (Where I live, that angle is about 38 degrees.) As you head north, that angle gets closer and closer to zero. So, during the Arctic summer the Sun cruises above the horizon, never setting.

Heading the other way, toward the equator, the angle of the Sun’s path increases to 90 degrees. At sunrise or sunset, the Sun drives straight up or down from the horizon.

OK, so I’m a little behind the times, but I just watched “Meet the Robinsons” on TV last night. Those of you more up-to-date with movies probably remember the motto of Cornelius Robinson, “Keep Moving Forward,” drawn from a quote from Walt Disney.

And so I got to wonder, what if we did not keep moving forward, as some members of our society would prefer? Where would be today?

The concept is the stuff of a myriad of science fiction novels, but let’s focus on just a few possibilities.

Nicolaus Copernicus, a Catholic cleric, on his own poked his nose into the organizations of the solar system. At the time, the prevailing belief (and church dogma) was that the Earth stood at the center of everything — Moon, Sun, planets, stars. This paradigm (there, I used Thomas Kuhn’s terminology) dictated that astrologers/astronomers had to undertake a frightening number of calculations to predict the locations of celestial objects in the sky.

By Copernicus’ time, those calculations were not all that accurate. Copernicus painstakingly measured the positions of celestial objects, and undertook to recalculate their motions. In the process, he apparently realized that life would be so much easier if the Sun was at the center, and not the Earth. While it did not make the calculations easier, at least it made them less exhausting.

Well, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting lots of money. Working as a non-union extra earns you about $7 a hour. I did get time-and-a-half for the overtime, but still the pay didn’t even cover gas and lodging in Nashville.

I am not upset. In fact, working as an extra in the next Hannah Montana movie (to be released next May) was an educational experience, if not a lucrative one. Ideally, you would have to be a local resident (which most of my co-workers are) to justify even taking the job.

Union extras get paid more, but to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild you have to have three separate speaking roles to qualify. A speaking role apparently means you say at least one line of dialog. Apparently, yelling “Hey, Hannah!” doesn’t count.

Welcome to The Tangled Bank 108 and to the little-known but still fascinating Wheat-dogg’s World. I hope that after you peruse the fine entries in this edition of The Tangled Bank you’ll stroll around and check out things here in my neck of the Worldwide Woods.

Today we have science bloggers musing on some of the greater profundities of the universe as well on more concrete issues closer to home. Some of these posts ask more questions than they answer, but heck that’s what science is all about, hey?

I’m the resident physics teacher, so we’re going to start the ball rolling with our lone physical-science submission, from Yoo Chul Chung at Yoo’s Ramblings. (Sorry, life scientists, a little physics never hurt anyone!) After reading the July issue of Scientific American, Yoo contemplates the meaning of hypothetical “building blocks” that can organize themselves to create the space-time we know and love. These “space-time quanta” curiously exist in two dimensions at the quantum level, but exhibit four dimensions at larger scales. Further, causality is integral to this system, closing any fancy relativistic loopholes to would-be time travelers hoping to jump through a wormhole to watch history unfold in real time. There goes about half the world’s Star Trek plotlines …

While Yoo ponders whether the universe is made of building blocks, the Evolved Rationalist considers whether William Dembski is clever enough to even play with blocks. In Dembski: The failure that keeps on failing, our author glosses on Bill’s seeming immunity to rational, logical thought as Bill gripes about the lack of theology in Kenneth Miller’s biology textbooks. Yes, dear friends, you read that right. Check out the Evolved Rationalist and see what we mean.

John Freshwater will burn crosses on students’ arms no more (see picture released by school officials to the AP, at right), at least in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He has been sacked.

On Friday, the Mount Vernon school board reviewed a 15-page investigative report on Freshwater’s actions in the classroom, and voted to dismiss the science teacher of 21 years.

Freshwater had been accused, among other things, of using a Tesla coil to burn a cross in a student’s arm, proselytizing students, teaching creationism contrary to school policy, and refusing to remove a Bible from his desk.

He and school officials still face legal action. The family of the student whose arm was burned filed a civil complaint in US District Court in Columbus last week, naming Freshwater and school officials as defendants. The law suit alleges Freshwater’s religious activities in the classroom violated the civil rights of the student, known only as John Doe.

The complaint also alleges school officials failed to reprimand Freshwater sufficiently after the arm-burning incident, and permitted him to proselytize students in class in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Freshwater, a fundamentalist Christian by all appearances, became a poster child for the so-called “war on Christianity” earlier this year when he refused to remove his copy of the Bible from his desk. Christian students in the school held rallies for his support, and a local right-wing Christianist radio commentator championed Freshwater as yet another victim of the secular war on religion. (See this story at WorldNetDaily, which quotes said commentator.)

The Tangled Bank is a collection of the best science-blog posts as judged by the science bloggers themselves. Basically, you write something that you think is good, we publish it.

Having been included in previous editions of the Tangled Bank, I volunteered to host it at some point in the future. That time has come: Tangled Bank #108 will be here June 25.

For submission rules, visit the link provided above.

The saga of John Freshwater, part XII …

While Freshwater’s superiors at the Mount Vernon schools dither, the family of one of his students have resorted to the all-American method of getting to the root of things — they’re suing him and the school district.

The suit claims that Freshwater violated the student’s civil rights by allegedly burning a cross into his arm with a Tesla coil and and that his superiors were negligent in not disciplining Freshwater.

The school district hired an outsider to investigate the allegations against Freshwater, an otherwise popular seventh-grade science teacher. That report is due Friday, at which time the school board will make some decision about Freshwater’s future, supposedly.

Freshwater made a name for himself earlier last year by refusing to remove his Bible from his desk. Christians loved his “Christ’s warrior” decision, but civil libertarians demurred. It then came out that Freshwater was a bit of a religious nut, proselytizing students, teaching creationism, and on at least one instance, burning a cross on a student’s arm with a Tesla coil.

That apparently woke up his superiors from their overly cautious slumber. They put an observer in his classroom while the independent investigators did their thing, and delayed any disciplinary action until the investigators filed their report.

Anyway, the lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Columbus earlier his week. I don’t have a copy of the complaint, but Ed Brayton over at ScienceBlogs does. He is as aghast at this whole mess as I am. How any teacher could be allowed to get away with this kind of malarkey defies all logic.