atheism Education: epistemology scientific method
by Warren
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Scientific Method, Scientific Purpose, Scientific Spirit
Just found this quote from Chauncey D. Leake in the most recent issue of Humanist magazine. He paraphrases Edwin Grant Conklin in this beautiful summary of the ways science does what it does:
“The purpose of science, he said, is like that of religion — to find out the truth about ourselves and our environment. The method is one of continual skepticism, self-critical and self-corrective, seeking data which are independently verifiable. The methodology proceeds either by experimental reasoning with logical and consistent coherence as in mathematics, or by observation, tentative explanation, controlled experimentation, and inducible conclusions as in the life sciences. The attitude or spirit of science as a concept, is realization that the findings of scientific effort are tentative and relative, that the validity of scientific conclusions rests on voluntary agreement among those who examine the evidence, and that unwelcome truth is better than cherished error. This is a value judgment, and gives moral significance to the whole concept of science. All of this is based on a concern, in scientific effort, for the welfare of humanity as a whole.”
Chauncey D. Leake — “Humanistic Aspects of the Unity in Science”
All of this is based on a concern, in scientific effort, for the welfare of humanity as a whole.
Let me repeat that.
All of this is based on a concern, in scientific effort, for the welfare of humanity as a whole.
I’m a member of the American Humanist Association. How about you?
Education environment: Desperation florida letters NPR
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 12: NPR Hears From Me
Driving home today, I switched back and forth between NPR and the Thom Hartmann show on Boston’s progressive AM station (for which FSM be thanked!). NPR News ran a story on freezing weather in Florida, focusing on the damage citrus groves were taking from ice and snow, and mentioning that virtually the entire tropical fish supply of North America was jeapordized by the extreme cold (I never thought about thousands upon thousands of goldfish being raised in outdoor tanks in Florida, for sale to households across the nation, but there you are).
Naturally, the NPR announcers didn’t say a thing about the role that global climate change has in freak weather events like this. So after I finished teaching this evening, I went to the NPR ombudsperson’s page and submitted the following:
Fruit Freezes in Florida…
… and I heard the story on NPR News this evening.
While I found the story of potentially frozen citrus groves and iced tropical fish farms interesting, I was saddened (although not surprised, alas) that NPR did not do analysis of this story in light of the unfolding crisis of global climate change. A story like this one is a perfect vehicle to illuminate the fact that increased temperatures in some parts of the world can trigger freak weather (including unreasonable and unseasonable cold) in others.
Polls have shown that a significant proportion of Americans don’t believe that global warming is happening at all, or don’t believe that it is due to human agency. The current spell of extreme cold will inevitably trigger more statements along the lines of, “Global warming? Ha! Ha! Can’t you see it’s snowing outside!”
It is the responsibility of a news organization to help its audience figure out what the news means. The story of frozen fruit and fish in the American South would have been a perfect opportunity for NPR to do exactly that: teach its listeners a little bit about the difference between weather and climate, and why a warming planet can cause icicles in orange groves.
The future of the human species hangs on developing our ability to make sense of phenomena outside our accustomed scales of time and magnitude. The climate crisis is a perfect example; it is increasingly likely that our distractability and ignorance will prevent our taking meaningful action until it is too late to make a difference.
By failing to see this story for what it really is, NPR is enabling those who seek to deny the reality of our ongoing climaticide.
Warren Senders
If any of you happen to hear them reading this on the air, please let me know!
Indian music music photoblogging: Bhopa Jaisalmer Rajasthan ravanhatta
by Warren
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Rajasthani Music: Tulcharam Bhopa plays Ravanhatta
In 2000, Vijaya and I traveled to Rajasthan, staying in Udaipur and Jaisalmer. I have loved Rajasthani music from the first time I heard it, and it was really a treat to listen to traditional artists in both cities.
The Ravanhatta (wiki spells it ravanahatha) is one of the oldest bowed instruments in the world.
The bowl is made of cut coconut shell, the mouth of which is covered with goat hide. A dandi, made of bamboo is attached to this shell. The principal strings are two: one of steel and the other of a set of horsehair. The long bow has jingle bells.[1]
The artists come from a lineage of bards, the Bhopas:
Every prominent family of the land-holding Rajput caste, I discovered, inherited a family of oral genealogists, musicians and praise singers, who celebrated the family’s lineage and deeds.
(snip)
…unlike the ancient epics of Europe – the Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf and The Song of Roland – which were now the province only of academics and literature classes, the oral epics of Rajasthan were still alive, preserved by a caste of wandering bhopas who travelled from village to village, staging performances.
Some Bhopas, of course, make their living performing for tourists. There were three or four ravanhatta players on the cobbled walkway up to the Jaisalmer Fort. We listened briefly to each; the one who really stood out to our ears was Tulcharam Bhopa, and we recorded a few of his pieces. It was early evening of Indian Independence Day, August 15, 2000.
Here are some of our photographs of Jaisalmer accompanying the beautiful playing of Tulcharam Bhopa, whom I’m told died a few years ago.
environment: Desperation letters Pi***ng into the wind
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 11: To The Cambridge Chronicle
It’s just after midnight, and I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. So I composed this one before going to bed. I think I’ll try and make this a part of the routine as my schedule starts to get crazier in the coming weeks.
How easy it is for us human beings to fool ourselves! Because it’s cold in Massachusetts, we conclude that “there’s no such thing as global warming.” Tell that to residents of Bulgaria, and to Puerto Ricans, who’ve both had record high temperatures. Tell that to people in Greenland, where the thermometer is hovering at around fifty degrees Farenheit. In January. The fact that large parts of the Northern United States are experiencing freezing temperatures only serves to demonstrate that local weather isn’t the same as climate. But we, steeped in American exceptionalism, cannot imagine that the story of the Earth’s climate isn’t a Story About Us. And, steeped in the false notion that an economic model based on unending consumption is somehow good for the world, we cannot imagine making the sacrifices necessary for the survival of the planet.
It is a tragedy in the making, aided and abetted by a thrill-seeking, ignorance-abetting media more focused on celebrity scandals and “he-said, she-said” stenography than the urgent planetary need for accurate information and analysis. It is a tragedy of selfishness and shortsightedness, enabled by politicians who play rhetorical games with one another while gigatons of Arctic methane begin to thaw under the tundra. Yes, it’s cold in Massachusetts. But it’s getting hotter and hotter here on Earth.
Warren Senders
Have you written a letter today?
Education Indian music music: intonation khyal learning practice riyaaz singing
by Warren
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Practice Tips and Techniques, No. 1
About ten years ago my student Brian O’Neill and I had a long discussion about practice techniques. He transcribed it and sent it along to me, and it languished on my hard drive. Recently, I remembered the material and dug it out. It needs editing, so it’s going to take a while to get it all tidy, but there’s some worthwhile stuff in that document. The first part of the conversation was about practicing the drone — the most basic type of self-tuning a singer can do.
WS: When I started out I did not have any particular deep sense of discipline in practice. Eventually I began by starting every day with a drone session. I would just sing the tonic, the Sa. And I would focus on that, and I would…
BTO: Tune up?
WS: Yeah. You try & get your temporomandibular joint a little bit loose; you do a little bit of overtoning; some tongue stretches; try and make sure the soft palate is down and you’re getting sinus resonance. What I tell my students is to begin with a little session (it might be 10 minutes) of Sa, every morning. And when you do that, you examine different variations.
For example, subtle intonational shifts. Get on Sa and move the note the smallest possible amount flat, then return it to the center, then move it sharp and return it. What you’re really doing is, you’re decreasing the intonational standard deviation of the pitch.
So that’s one approach to the Sa.
Another approach is breath control. You get a watch with a sweep second hand, sing Sa [one breath’s worth], and time yourself. “Hmmm, that was 11 seconds. OK, I’m going to go for 12.” And then you ask yourself, “Where does most of the air go out? Oh, most of the air goes out in the very first half a second. OK, let me try and regulate that. Good!, I got 5 more seconds on that.” So those are all good ways of occupying yourself on the drone. So 10 minutes turns out to be nowhere near enough time, and you just pick one or another of those exercises to do with the tonic.
There’s a lot more to come, including very specific methods for organizing your practice to get the most effective study in the time you have available. Stay tuned!
Finally, a word on a related subject.
If you’re studying or teaching music, you’re engaged in the long, slow, work of taking parts of our past and preparing them to travel into the future.
Therefore, you owe it to yourself and to the music you cherish — to educate yourself about climate change.
No stable climate – no music. It’s as simple as that.
MUSIC IS A CLIMATE ISSUE
Indian music music photoblogging: Bhimsen Joshi Gangubai Hangal khyal Kumar Gandharva Malini Rajurkar Mallikarjun Mansur
by Warren
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Khyal Photoblogging
These were taken between 1985 and 1987, at various concerts in Pune, Mumbai, Miraj and Delhi. Enjoy:
Bhimsen Joshi:
Sawai Gandharva Mahotsav, 1985. He was singing a beautiful Todi, “Changai nainawa” followed by “Langara kankariyaa jina maaro.” Nana Muley on tabla, Purushottam Wallawalkar on harmonium.
environment Politics: Desperation letters Pi***ng into the wind
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 10: To a Local Paper
Very tired; very spaced out. Wife & kid were on their way out to a dance class and the car battery died, so this one was composed in the short interval between scrambling around with jumper cables and the arrival of a student.
Anyway, it went off to the Arlington Advocate, a local newspaper. We’ll see.
UPDATE: They’ll only publish letters from Arlington residents or businesspeople. So I’ll send it along to the Boston Globe this evening.
Polls suggest that a significant proportion of the American people “don’t believe in global warming.” This represents a tragic failure in education and a tragic failure in communication. In the wake of Sputnik, science education in America became a national priority and we collectively accomplished wonders; in the wake of Reagan and the rise of the evangelical movement, science has been downgraded and degraded, and we collectively remain oblivious to a looming disaster. Our inability to understand the scary facts of global climate change is also a failure of imagination: surrounded by exhortations to “live for the moment” and reminded daily that “it’s all about YOU,” Americans cannot conceive of a multi-decade interval between cause and effect, cannot imagine that the tragedy of climaticide will affect them in any way. Our politics, our media, our educational system and our economic system are all contributors; this is a perfect example of a systemic problem.
Unfortunately, we are running out of time. The failure to achieve a meaningful climate treaty in Copenhagen and the unwillingness of science-ignorant senators to act on climate-change legislation may be the precursor to a “perfect storm” of devastating magnitude.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Desperation Pi***ng into the wind
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 9: Happy birthday!
She got up this morning and opened presents; this afternoon we’re having a party for the five-year-old birthday girl. Mid-morning she had a swim class, and while she was splashing around, I wrote a fax to the White House:
Dear President Obama,
Congratulations on nearing the end of your first year in office. I hope that among your accomplishments you can also recognize the extraordinary degree to which your political opposition has dedicated itself to frustrating and hindering your political and legislative agenda. You have bent over backwards to accommodate the Republicans, and over and over your readiness to accommodate has been treated as a weakness, leading to a dilution of your policy initiatives.
In the long run, the looming climate crisis is without doubt the single most important problem that you (or any leader) will be called upon to address. It is imperative that you use your communication skills to educate the public on this subject; there is no time left for us, for our culture and civilization, for the web of biodiversity upon which all planetary life depends. I beg of you, sir, to publicly acknowledge the importance of Dr. James Hansen’s work — and to vigorously promote the absolute necessity for America to lead the world in the reduction of atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million.
Time is running out, and the Republican strategy appears to be, simply, to wait for the Rapture. We can’t afford inaction.
Thank you,
Warren Senders
Have you contacted your President today?
environment: Desperation letters Pi***ng into the wind
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 8: To the Local Murdoch
The Boston Herald is the paper equivalent of FOX News here in Boston. They’re owned by Murdoch, and they’re about as likely to print my letter as they are to endorse a Bernie Sanders presidential campaign (on the other hand, they’ve done some good arts coverage in the past; I have some nice clips from the Herald back in the day). I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired this morning, but I thought a few 9/11 references might up the sensationalist content of my letter. Perhaps that will, er, stimulate them.
The evidence indicating human causes for global climate change is overwhelming and points to a rapidly approaching crisis of unimaginable magnitude. Our media choose instead to ignore or ridicule mountains of scientific research, instead highlighting one or two oil-funded denialists who argue to the contrary. Let’s put it in perspective. Remember the build-up to the Iraq war? Our print and broadcast media became cheerleaders for the Bush administration’s preemptive attack on another nation, an attack predicated on the flimsiest of evidence. If the evidence for Iraqi WMDs had been as strong as the evidence for human causes of climate change, we would have found piles of nuclear warheads on every street corner.
Or, to put it another way: the media’s dismissal of decades of validated research is painfully reminiscent of a chief executive who received a Presidential Daily Briefing in August of 2001 headed “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in US”; a president who responded to urgent warnings from intelligence officials by saying, “There, now you’ve covered your ass.” The eagerness of our news establishment to downplay the most urgent threat our civilization has ever faced in favor of celebrity scandals and fashionable irrelevancies is just another version of “Now watch this drive.”
Warren Senders
Go ahead. Write to your local Murdoch fishwrap. Use small words.
letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com
environment: Desperation letters Pi***ng into the wind
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 7: Boston Globe
Sent this morning to the Boston Globe. In keeping with the doctrine of recycling, if they don’t print it, I’ll send it to some other papers in the next couple of days.
The writer Brian Aldiss defines civilization as “the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.” Our civilization has done a wonderful job of distancing us from our waste in general, as witness the fact that while the world’s largest landfill contains millions of tons of plastic trash and occupies an area as large or larger as the continental United States, it’s smack in the middle of the Pacific ocean, out of sight and out of mind. Similarly, our emissions of carbon dioxide (even as they reside in our atmosphere, all around us) are kept at a great mental distance; it’s much easier to think about Tiger Woods’ marital problems and the latest episode of a popular television program than it is to confront our own waste and wastefulness. Emerson said that the human race will “eventually die of civilization.” The ever-increasing likelihood of catastrophic global climate change makes the Sage of Concord’s words ring all too true.
A properly functioning print and broadcast media would be educating the public about these issues, making a clear distinction between scientific truth and irresponsible denialism. Instead we are treated to a never-ending parade of distractions and irrelevancies, while the world’s ecosystems crumble and the possibility of a happy and sustainable life for future generations grows ever dimmer.
Warren Senders
Have you written to your local branch of the Corporate Media today? You should. It will give you a few fleeting seconds of satisfaction.