Author: Paul Hutch

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What's up with that school wizard story

I’ve had a draft of this post lying around since the end of May but kept putting off finishing it up. At the end of June I saw Mr. Piculas on the Colbert Report so I wrote some more and now that he’s in the news again I figured I’d better finish it up.

Via this post at the Bad Astronomy Blog and further research, I’ve learned some new information pertaining to a story I wrote about two months ago. In the May 18th St. Petersburg Times, staff writer Jeffrey S. Solochek has an article titled, Internet story of Pasco ‘wizard’ teacher spreads like magic. The article says there where many abusive calls and emails delivered to the school and school board members. I find it very stupid of people to have contacted the school and school board to ridicule and insult them. I certainly didn’t advocate this and neither did any of the blogs I linked to or read.

In going over the coverage of this story I found some very odd inconsistencies in the documents that the school board provided to WTSP-TV. On this follow up story page there are PDF copies of the official dismissal form and the official letter to Mr. Piculas. The dismissal form and official letter are no longer available at those links, I still have copies I downloaded if anyone needs them.

These are the odd things I noticed:

1. Letter mentions the magic trick but the dismissal form does not.

2. Dismissal form mentions inappropriate language but the letter does not.

3. Letter says incident occurred 1/16/2008 the dismissal form states it was 1/17/2008.

4. Dismissal form has a placeholder for the substitute teachers signature but it is blank.

5. Dismissal form has a scribbled over date at the start of 2/??/08 and next to it 1/23/08.

piculascrossedoutdate

6. Dismissal form was faxed from the school on 2/12/2008 (upside down on the bottom of the form, picture rotated).

piculasbottomfaxline

The most suspicious discrepancy to me is the crossed out date by the principal. The crossed out date of 2/??/08 points to the document actually being written after the letter of dismissal, not before as implied by the 1/23 date. It looks like he originally wrote 2/12/08 but of course it could just be pareidolia. Viewing the original document under magnification would provide a clearer picture of the situation.

If the principal and school board wanted to cover up the original complaint of wizardry as Mr. Piculsa described it, they could have filed a second dismissal form on 2/12 with a false date making it appear as if it was filed on 1/23. It looks to me as if there was a previous dismissal form filed before the 1/28 letter and this was a later revision to remove the wizardry accusation that was on the original dismissal form. But that’s just my opinion, without further examination of the original dismissal form the truth of the situation can not be determined accurately.

Now I read that Mr. Piculas has filed a lawsuit based on unspecified discrepancies in the documents. I wonder if faking County School records is a criminal offense in LOL Florida.

Here’s a couple of quotes from the latest Tampa Tribune article emphasis mine:

Jeffrey Gordon, the Tampa attorney representing Piculas, said the school district defamed his client by making untrue accusations about his classroom performance that have affected his efforts to teach in other districts.

…

Gordon said he thinks the evidence will show the other claims about Piculas’ performance were trumped-up charges that were added later and that documents mentioning them were retroactively predated. None of the other complaints came up in the conversation with the human resources supervisor, Gordon said.
“They never suggested he did anything wrong other than performing the magic trick,” he said.

I’m glad Mr. Piculas got someone to look into these documents, I emailed Ronnie Blair of The Tampa Tribune pointing out these oddities back in May but I never had a reply. I’m guessing my email was written off as some conspiracy minded rambling as I’m sure much of the email they get is. I’d really like for the whole story to come out but I won’t be surprised if the County simply buys Mr. Piculas and his lawyers silence.

Links to local media reports:

Substitute Teacher Says Wizardry Accusation Cost Him Job by Ronnie Blair, The Tampa Tribune, Published: May 5, 2008

Presto! Teacher Out Of A Job By Ronnie Blair, The Tampa Tribune, Published: May 6, 2008

Here’s The Trick To Becoming A Laughingstock by Daniel Ruth, The Tampa Tribune, Published: May 15, 2008

Magic trick costs teacher job WTSP-TV May 5, 2008

Magician: I’ve worked at Pasco County schools WTSP-TV May 13, 2008

Dismissal Form & Letter @ WTSP-TV no longer available at those links

Since these documents are still gone from the news sites I have put copies here: Dismissal Form & Letter

Internet story of Pasco ‘wizard’ teacher spreads like magic By Jeffrey S. Solochek, St. Petersburg Times, Published: May 18, 2008

Former Teacher Plans Lawsuit By Ronnie Blair, The Tampa Tribune, Published: July 8, 2008

Fired Pasco substitute teacher plans lawsuit By Jeffrey S. Solochek, St. Petersburg Times, Published: July 8, 2008

An update to this article is here.

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Coulomb's Birthday

Charles Augustin de Coulomb was born on June 14th 1736 in Angouleme, France. Coulomb worked as a military engineer for 20 years after graduating from the military school at Mezieres in 1761. During this time when most engineering involved only practical numerical solutions he applied physics and mathematics to the study of mechanical engineering problems. While the advanced solutions weren’t applied by many of his engineering peers, they were instrumental to the rapid advancement of mechanics in the following centuries.

The enormous body of work produced by Coulomb over the next twenty years includes major advances in our understanding of electricity and magnetism. His work during this period that most impacts my job was the development of Coulomb’s law. To honor this great engineer and scientist, the SI unit for electric charge is named the coulomb.

Biographies:
Wikipedia
University of St Andrews

coulomb

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Sesquicentennial of the public debut of Darwin's Big Idea

One Hundred and Fifty years ago today on July first 1858, Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker read a paper to the Linnean Society of London. The important paper was: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, By Charles Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S.., & F.G.S., and Alfred Wallace, Esq.

Thus began 150 years of amazing advances in the biological sciences that have improved our lives and life spans enormously. Sadly, this also marks the start of 150 years of denial and willful ignorance by fundamentalist religious people.

Read more about the event at this post by Richard Carter, FCD of The Red Notebook blog. While you’re there sign up to become a member of The Friends of Charles Darwin.

Paul Hutchinson, FCD

Charlie is my Darwin

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House passes blanket retroactive immunity for telcos

Well the House of Representatives passed the crappy piece of legislation that provides retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. I find it disgusting that the House decided that potentially illegal spying on citizens is not worthy of full investigation and instead passed a bill that kills the currently progressing legal proceedings. I am glad to report that my representative, Congressman Richard E. Neal, voted against the bill, thank you very much Representative Neal.

There was a former Deputy Attorney General on the News Hour Friday night who tried to make light of this immunity with a bad analogy. He said if a policeman takes your car to chase a criminal you are given immunity from prosecution for whatever happens so, the telcos should get immunity. This is not anywhere near the same as the immunity they want to give the telcos. If a policeman hands you a gun and tells you to shoot someone in the head AFAIK you will not be given immunity from prosecution. Every citizen is required to know the law and when instructed by anyone to break that law the citizen must say no or accept the consequences. Sure a Judge might give you a break on the sentence if it wasn’t easy to determine the legality but you can’t expect full immunity because an insane authority figure tells you to do something that you should know is wrong.

The bill is now in the Senate, lets hope they throw out the retroactive immunity provision so that we can find out what this monkey business was all about.

Please contact your Senators and urge them to vote NO on this bill that cuts sharply into our Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

More information about the House fiasco here:

House Caves, Approves Fake ‘Compromise’ on Telecom Immunity

House Falls Down on the Job

This article covers the action in the Senate on this bill:

Senators Dodd and Feingold Stand Strong Against Immunity

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A Quack who admits it

drkatzDavid L. Katz, M.D is a purveyor of medical woo from Yale University. 😦 Since he posted this quote on his blog I figured I’d make his wish come true. Of course we all know this makes him a Witch! I’ve developed some easy tests to determine if a doctor is likely a quack. If the doctor has been on Oprah’s TV show they are very likely to be promoting quack medicine (e.g. Dr. “enlarge your penis by loosing weight” Oz). If the doctor has a web site trying to sell you stuff they are extremely likely to be a quack, hold onto your wallet as you run away fast.

For more information about the bad doctor and his pseudoscientific ways check out these posts by some good evidence based doctors.

“Fluid evidence” strikes back: Dr. Katz versus the skeptical blogsophere

Integrative baloney @ Yale

Changing the Rules of Evidence

“Integrative” medicine at Yale: A more “fluid” concept of evidence?

As far as I’m concerned Yale’s Dr. Katz is far less useful than the funny Dr. Katz.dr-katz-logo

I hereby release the Dr. Katz as a Duck image to the Public Domain. Creative Commons License

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FCC News

The Do-Not-Call list has been made permanent!

The Federal Communications Commission has amended its rules to require telemarketers to honor registrations with the National Do-Not-Call Registry indefinitely. The previous rules provided that registrations would expire after five years.

This action is consistent with Congress’s mandate in the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, which prohibits the removal of numbers from the Registry unless the consumer cancels the registration or the number has been disconnected and reassigned or is otherwise invalid. The Federal Trade Commission has already committed to retain numbers on the Registry indefinitely.

Read the full announcement here.

More DTV transition actions against retailers:

Big Lots Stores, $48K

Variety Wholesalers, $38K

BJ’s Wholesale Club, $20K

Conn’s Inc, $70K

Rent-A-Center, $60,000

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Firefox 3 Download Day

Download Day

Tomorrow, June 17th, is the official launch of Firefox 3 and we’re trying to set a Guinness World Record. Please download Firefox 3 tomorrow to:

Set a Guinness World Record
Enjoy a Better Web
Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours – itÂ’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.
The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008.

I’ll be downloading it tomorrow and you should to.

———-Update 11:00AM EDT———–

According to the Mozilla blog, the record setting attempt starts at 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00PM EDT), for other  time zones see this page.

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Denon, Incompetent or Fraudulent?

Denon is now selling a 5 foot Ethernet like cable for $500.00. Either Denon’s engineer’s are totally incompetent for designing a digital audio link that requires a $500 cable to work over 5 feet or, Denon’s marketing and management are jumping on the take money from gullible audiophiles bandwagon. Either situation is very bad, you don’t want to buy incompetently designed or fraudulent products.

denon1Take a look at the data sheet, it is completely devoid of electrical specifications, all it has is the usual range of pseudo-scientific marketing phrases. The biggest laugh I got from the data sheet is this bullet point. “Direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable” and the picture shows a double headed arrow printed on the connector shell. The symbol clearly shows that you can connect the cable in either of the two possible ways making the symbol completely unnecessary. Another laugh is their labeling of the strain relief bushing in the head shell as a “bush”. Sorry Denon you don’t even have a firm grasp of the English language, a bush is plant type not a strain relief device.

I am very disappointed in Denon and in my opinion they have become snake oil salesman. I recommend that people do not even consider buying any gear from these hucksters. Any company willing to stoop this low is one to stay far away from if you value your money.

This article about the cable has some spot on observations and reasonable reader comments. My favorite phrase from the article is this, “Not made of solid gold and unicorn hair then”.

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Missionary Marines in Fallujah

This is disgusting and illegal by military law, the invasion of Iraq is not supposed to be the new Crusades.

Now residents of the city are abuzz that some Americans whom they consider occupiers are also acting as Christian missionaries. Residents said some Marines at the western entrance to their city have been passing out the coins for two days in what they call a “humiliating” attempt to convert them to Christianity.

…

“Multi-National Force-Iraq is investigating a report that U.S. military personnel in Fallujah handed-out material that is religious and evangelical in nature,” the spokesman, Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, said in a statement e-mailed to McClatchy. “Local commanders are investigating since the military prohibits proselytizing any religion, faith or practices.”

Hopefully they’ll severely punish those responsible for the atrocious action. Read the full story here:

McClatchy Washington Bureau – Iraqis claim Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah