April 2018 : Proslogion

A Homeschooling Mother Looks Back on Her Journey

A Facebook friend of mine named Ginger Linthicum Narmour is finishing up her last year of homeschooling. She posted a wonderful summary of what her experience has meant to her, and with her permission, I want to share it with you. I pray that every homeschooling mother can look back at her experience with such joy and wonder!

This spring is poignant for me since it marks my very last year of homeschooling. The Lord called us so long ago as Michael and I were contemplating which educational road we should walk down with our daughter, Courtney. Living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest at the time, we walked along the beach one moonlit night and felt that call to travel a road that was unfamiliar, one often criticized and thought second-best. Armed with supplies and a few books penned by the brave veterans that paved our way, we embarked on the most beautiful journey this mama (and daddy) could have ever hoped to enjoy.

I remember hearing her first words read. I still see the new colored pencils in her hand sketching views from her upstairs window. Then the joy of adding a second student, Lindsey, and breathing the sweet, salty air on daily walks with cooing baby and budding biologist in tow, all around the Navy housing neighborhood down to the beach, the park, the library. I’m remembering the family “field trips” to apple orchards and nature estuaries and museums and whale watches and picnics at parks with trees as green and tall and lush as any this Texas girl could have ever dreamed of seeing in person. Such are the things of heaven on earth.

Moving back home to Texas brought blessing number 3, Caitlin, and we were now a homeschooling family of 5. What precious memories of personal phone calls with best-selling curriculum authors who shared their talents freely with me, African tents in the living room and museum visits and struggles with spelling and beautiful books read faithfully every night by a precious daddy to his beloved daughters. I can still remember their eyes watching him read. Molding soft hearts and minds; lighting those fires. What a perfect job to be blessed with!

Moving to Arkansas brought blessing number 4, Kelsey, and our little family still sat together for read-alouds and music concerts and physical science videos and math facts practice and cooking exotic meals for geography lessons. Waiting with such expectancy for the haggard mail carrier to bring us yet another box heavy with carefully-chosen books for the next year. We just couldn’t wait to start again. Ah, all the pictures taken, the memories made. A more lovely life for me would not have been possible.

Years passed, a new Virginia home, the God-inspired talents bubbling over, college successes, hard lessons learned, characters molded and mellowed, fruit ripening, blessings heaped upon blessings. The hard work, the struggles with life and the laundry and the never-ending dirty dishes and impossible curriculum fair purchase decisions, I wouldn’t trade a minute of any of it.

So this last month of our school year is coming up. I see the books slowly being finished one by one and being placed on shelves or in boxes to pass on to new families who are beginning or continuing their studies. The melancholy ache of sweet times drawing to a close. I never intended to finish this journey without my beloved but the Lord has strengthened me to finish the race with happiness and joy. I am content.

Just a few more weeks to go and I will hang up my old ‘denim jumper’ and call my homeschooling days a blessed success. All I have to do is look at their beautiful faces, their beautiful souls.

Once Again, Don’t Believe Facebook When It Comes to Science!

Cyclone Larry near northeast Australia (left) and Hurricane Hernan near Mexico (right). Notice that the rotation in the Southern hemisphere is clockwise, and the rotation in the Northern Hemisphere is counterclockwise.
(Images Courtesy of NASA/GSFC, by Jeff Schmaltz and Jacques Descloitres)

A few months ago, I posted an article about how you should not believe Facebook memes and videos when it comes to science. Of course, I have seen more scientific nonsense on Facebook, but lately the following video keeps popping up on my feed:

When I see it, I generally comment that the video is a clever con. It is based on a scientific concept that is quite true, but it does not apply to situations that involve short distances. Most of my Facebook “friends” express appreciation for me pointing out the error, but one of them was adamant for a while that the video shows a real truth. In my efforts to educate him, I ended up finding a really nice video resource, which I will share after my long-winded statements on this issue.

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Earth Day Predictions that Were “Spectacularly Wrong”

Image from the Wellcome Collection gallery (click for credit)

Probably because yesterday was Earth Day, I ran across an article written by Ronald Bailey for Earth Day 2000. It reviews some of the predictions made by “environmentalists”^* in the 1970s, when the first Earth day was celebrated. As Bailey noted back in the year 2000:

The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong. (emphasis his)

There are a lot of failed predictions in the article, but I want to start with the one I highlighted in the meme above. Here is the full quote, which is found in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness:

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine. (emphasis his)

Notice how Dr. Gunter starts. He uses the consensus argument. He says that demographers (those who study human populations) “agree almost unanimously” with his grim forecast. I have no idea whether or not that statement was correct back in the 1970s, but it is eerily similar to what we hear now in reference to global warming, AKA climate change. Climate alarmists insist that we must listen to them, because climate scientists agree almost unanimously that doom is right around the corner. In light of this fact, it is useful to note that the supposed “consensus” has been spectacularly wrong before.

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This Galaxy Has No “Need” For Dark Matter!

This diffuse galaxy, NGC 1052-DF2, has no “need” for dark matter.

Dark matter is one of those things that scientists use to make up for an observation which is inconsistent with the known laws of physics. When astronomers look at the motion of stars in a galaxy, they can use Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation to estimate how much mass must be in the galaxy to produce the motion that is observed. However, they can also use the amount of light they see coming from the galaxy to estimate how much mass is there. In general, those two masses don’t agree. The motion of the stars indicates significantly more mass than the light coming from the galaxy.

That’s where dark matter comes in. Since the matter we can see using the light that comes from a galaxy doesn’t account for the motion of the stars within the galaxy, there must be a lot of matter that is too dark to see. But if it’s too dark to see, it must be some strange type of matter that is fundamentally different from the matter we have studied here on earth. Many experiments have been done trying to directly observe dark matter, but so far, they have come up empty. Thus, if dark matter exists, its nature is a complete mystery to us. This is frustrating, since astrophysicists think that about 80% of the mass in the universe comes from dark matter!

Some scientists (I count myself among them) are hesitant to accept that about 80% of the universe’s mass is made up of something we can’t detect, so they look for alternate explanations. One group suggests that on very large scales, Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation is slightly different from what it is here on earth. These physicists suggest a modified version of the law, which they call Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). If you accept their modification, the need for dark matter goes away. Another scientist suggests that if you actually apply Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation properly (taking into account that there are multiple bodies exerting gravitational force on all the other bodies and that those bodies are in constant motion), you need very little (if any) dark matter to understand why the stars move so quickly in galaxies.

Well, these three competing ideas (dark matter, MOND, and multiple-body analysis) have just been presented with a means by which they can distinguish themselves: a diffuse galaxy charmingly named NGC 1052-DF2, which is pictured above. This is the first discovered galaxy for which the mass calculated from the motion of the stars is pretty much equal to the mass calculated from the light that we see. Thus, there is no “need” for dark matter in this galaxy.

Now this galaxy is anything but a run-of-the-mill collection of stars. Most galaxies have a noticeable central region. This one doesn’t. Most galaxies have dense enough stars that there are portions through which you cannot see. This galaxy is completely see-through. Most galaxies have tight clusters of stars that orbit the outer parts of the galaxy. While this one has those clusters, they are about twice as large as the clusters seen in other galaxies. Most galaxies show evidence of a central black hole. This one doesn’t. Finally, it is part of a group of galaxies that is dominated by a very large, active galaxy known as NGC 1052. It’s possible that all these features somehow explain the apparent lack of need for dark matter.

I really hope the group promoting MOND and the scientist promoting a multiple-body solution to star motion in galaxies turn their attention to this new discovery. While I am happy to believe in dark matter if there is strong evidence for it, right now, I am inclined to believe there is an alternate solution to the “missing mass” problem in galaxies. Hopefully, further analysis of this galaxy will help us find out.

A New Feature in the Human Body Has Been Discovered!

Schematic of the newly-found human anatomical feature (Illustration by Jill Gregory licenced under CC-BY-ND – click for more information)

In one of my online biology classes last week, a student asked if I had any comments on the new organ that was just discovered in the human body. I didn’t have any comments, because I didn’t know anything about it. I expressed a lot of skepticism, saying that with all the imaging techniques available to scientists, it’s hard to imagine that an organ in the human body has been missed. However, I promised the student I would look into it, and while I hesitate to call it a new organ, it turns out that a new feature of the human body has most certainly been discovered!

You can read about it in the open-access article published by Scientific Reports. As shown in the illustration above, the researchers found that wherever tissues are stretched or compressed (like the lungs or even the intestines), there is a network of fluid-filled spaces underneath. In the illustration above, think of the part labeled “Mucosa” as the lining of an organ. Underneath that lining, there is a mesh of collagen proteins and elastin proteins (elastin is a part of the “collagen bundle” in the illustration). Those proteins have specific cells attached to them that react to CD34, a stain used to highlight a feature of certain cells when they are viewed under a microscope. In between this mesh of proteins and cells, the spaces are filled with fluid.

For a long time, anatomists have understood that there is a lot of fluid in between the cells of an organism. It is called “interstitial fluid,” and it makes up about 16% of the human body’s weight. It bathes the cells, keeping their environment reasonably constant and serving as way that cells can exchange chemicals with the rest of the body. It comes from the blood, and then it drains into the lymphatic system, where it is cleaned and returned to the blood. So the fluid found in those spaces is not new. The fact that the fluid is found in a mesh of proteins and cells and forms the sponge-like structure illustrated above was completely unknown up to this point.

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NASA’s Study Indicates Space Changes GENE EXPRESSION, not GENES!

Identical twin astronauts, Scott Kelly (right) and Mark Kelly (left).

Newsweek headlined its article, “Scott Kelly: NASA Study Confirms Astronaut’s DNA Actually Changed in Space.” The article says:

After landing, 93 percent of Scott Kelly’s genes returned to normal, the researchers found. The altered 7 percent, however, could indicate long-term changes in genes connected to the immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, oxygen deprivation and elevated carbon dioxide levels.

The Telegraph headline reads, “Nasa astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly no longer genetically identical after space trip.” The article states:

But new findings by Nasa have found that life away from planet Earth has exacted a surprising toll. The pair are no longer genetically identical twins.

Please understand that both of these articles are doing what is typical of the modern media when it comes to science. They are taking results that are really, really interesting, and they are hyping the results to the point where they are not telling the truth anymore. NASA did do a wonderful experiment on the genetic effects of being in space a long time, and while the results are quite remarkable, they don’t indicate that space changes a person’s genes. They indicate that space changes the expression of certain genes, and for some, that change is remarkably long-lived.

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