Time for another episode of the excellent documentary series The Planets, this time on the Sun. Titled Star, the episode captures the magnitude of several “Eureka!” moments, as when Angelo Secchi, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, realised the blinding disc in the daytime sky is another one of those points that twinkle at night. As with previous episodes, there’s plenty of rare footage and some interesting characters, not least Kristian Birkeland, who created laboratory auroras while wearing a fez to protect his brain from radiation.

Part 1:

Splitting light. Secchi’s discovery. A makeshift umbrella. Twisted magnetism.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 2:

Artificial auroras. Comets and clues. Force field. Heliopause. The stuff of life.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Related: Astronomical Odds, Craters, Freefall.  (h/t, The Thin Man.)

The issue of classroom political advocacy crops up here quite often and Evan Maloney’s documentary, Indoctrinate U, illustrates just how far advocacy can go, and how corrosive to probity it can be. A key scene in Maloney’s film concerns psychology professor Laura Freberg, who faced a campaign of harassment by left-leaning colleagues and was told, “We never would have hired you if we knew you were a Republican.” Freberg’s students later admitted they’d known she was a “closet Republican” precisely because she didn’t use the classroom to air her political views.

A recent post on classroom advocacy at Crooked Timber, a site popular among left-leaning academics, has prompted some interesting comments: 

There’s really just the media and you, the universities, between civilization and chaos, and you are natural enemies because reality is liberal and media is corporatist. […] If we lose to McCain, at some point you can say goodbye to your pretty little university system. […] I’d say meet in darkened caves in the middle of the night if that’s what it takes to get out the truth.

Some take a more nuanced view:

I expect my students to respect my statements in class as authoritative (although not necessarily correct), and so I have a responsibility to limit what I say in class to what is warranted by my expertise. Since candidate preference is not a matter of expertise, it would be remiss of me to indicate a preference for a specific candidate when teaching. However, this doesn’t apply to my non-teaching related interactions with students at the university where I teach.

It’s not all bad, of course.

Indoctrination only makes sense if you believe reasoning won’t actually win over the students.

But even if we set aside the not insignificant issue of whether professors of, say, literary criticism have any business trying to “win over” their students and mould their political outlook, reasonably or otherwise, there is another problem. Is the student-professor relationship sufficiently equal and reciprocal to ensure evidence and reason prevail? Is there no pressure on students to defer, to please? Can we simply assume that improper leverage will never be brought to bear – for instance, in terms of grading or more subtle signs of displeasure? And isn’t there an unavoidable air of… predation?

PETA wants ice-cream made with human breast milk. To spare those little cow teats. (h/t, Dan) // Woman trapped in home by giant pig. (h/t, Ace) // A house made of cellophane. (h/t, Coudal) // “Researchers have created a balloon-like membrane just one atom thick.” // Nanosoccer. // The shorter thesaurus. Big words made small. // Interstellar Sugar. Or some other powdery substance. // The bathtub planetarium. A partial success. // Handblown lamps. // McCain supporters visit New York’s Upper West Side. Umbrage ensues. “Nazi Germany!” // Great moments of symbolic failure. // When kickboxing goes horribly, horribly wrong. // “You use your left hand and yet you claim to hate Satan?!” // Designer yachts. // UPL8 TV. Stupefying stuff. // Rubik’s cube for the blind. // Tetrapod erasers. // Piano and light painting. // Hamlet and Facebook, together at last. // Chimps quite skilled at buttock recognition. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Willie Dixon.

A few more ditties from the ephemera archives.

Grace Jones: The Apple Stretching. (1982)

Mohammed Rafi: Jaan Pehechan-Ho. (1965)

Charles Trenet: Boum. (1938)

Valaida Snow: I Can’t Dance (I Got Ants in My Pants). (Circa 1933-36)

Washboard Sam: Diggin’ My Potatoes. (1939)

Johnny Cash: One Piece at a Time. (1975)

Ray Charles: Night Time is the Right Time. (1959)

Sly & the Family Stone: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). (1969)

Julie London: Black Coffee. (1960)

Penguin Café Orchestra: Music for a Found Harmonium. (1984)

Use them wisely.

A few days ago I received a drive-by email – i.e., one intended to convey emphatic displeasure and have the last word rather than hang around for a reply. I’ll spare you the more colourful bits; what matters is the question that was fired my way:

How can you – an atheist – defend Sarah Palin?!

There’s a lot crammed into those eight words, almost all of it mistaken. Firstly, I don’t recall “defending” Sarah Palin. I recently quoted Camille Paglia’s comments on Palin and noted reactions to the governor from large parts of the left and the feminist sisterhood. In recent days reactions have scarcely been more temperate. For instance, Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, yesterday offered this:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state… Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. 

Given the illegal hacking and distribution of Palin’s private email by leftwing activists, perhaps Ms Wolf should reflect on her convictions that,

[Palin] uses mafia tactics against critics.

And,

Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism.

And while it’s true such hyperbole is noted with more than a little amusement, I don’t think that technically qualifies as my defence or endorsement of any particular candidate. Though perhaps it lends weight to my suspicion that Palin’s most vehement detractors may prove much more revealing than Palin herself.

Secondly, I don’t recall ever referring to myself as an atheist. If pressed for a label, I’d probably opt for agnostic, insofar as there doesn’t appear to be a satisfactory answer to the question of a benign and ultimate cause intrigued by human beings, which is at least part of what the word “God” seems to mean. Regular readers will know I’m sometimes unkind to religious claims of entitlement and preternatural knowledge. If a person believes that the origin and nature of reality has much to do with the sadistic ravings of a Bedouin pirate, that person is ignorant, probably foolish and possibly unwell. And if a person doesn’t realise that the Biblical Jesus is, at best, a quasi-fictional amalgam of much earlier myths and stories, that person should read a little pre-Christian mythology and note the similarities.

But not being impressed by Islam’s warlord prophet or Christianity’s patchwork messiah doesn’t in itself address the question of how everything that exists came into being and whether or not its existence has numinous connotations. If a person maintains that the Bible is an original, non-fictional account of actual paranormal events, I’m not likely to take that person terribly seriously. If, on the other hand, a person has an ill-defined belief that the universe has some kind of agreeable cause – one not readily expressed in rational terms – then, whether or not I agree or grasp what’s allegedly being perceived, I can’t dismiss the claim in quite the same way.

It’s surprising what you can squeeze out of eight indignant words.