I agree. I just pulled out my Pennsylvania drivers license, and it has on there my eye color, height, and *sex*.

That's a privacy concern.

OH MY GOD THERE'S A PICTURE OF ME ON HERE TOO

The 90's called again, for you, and this time left a message

they want their joke format back.

All it will take is for a couple of the geeks, nerds and ~wads to fire up World Of Warcraft or start up a torrent client and saturate the bandwidth.

The bullies will realize this and will then do what they do best.

If possible, take your kids out to a dark sky site. Some place where the megawatts from empty parking lots are blocked. If you have never been under a pitch-black sky, it is mind-blowing.

You could start the unit by showing them the constellations in class. Show them the big dipper, and how it points to Polaris. When you get out in the field, ask them to count the stars in the big dipper. Show them that the middle star of the handle is actually two stars, and that native americans used to test the eyesight of potential trackers that way - if they saw two stars, they had eagle vision.

I wouldn't use the telescope at all. One thing that would blow their minds is building a simple radio telescope antenna to listen to lightning on Jupiter. Just a piece of wire, basically. In class (or whenever jupiter is below the horizon), hook up the wires and amps to a speaker. Record that. When jupiter is visible, do the same thing and play back the recording. the difference is lighting on jupiter.

If you're doing this in spring, you could work in the equinox.

With astronomy, there is SO MUCH you can do, and any treatment for 9th graders will be insufficient. Just try your best. I'd probably pull a chapter from the movie Contact. "See that bright star there. That's a planet. That's another world. Because it's so bright, people long ago thought it was so beautiful. Now we know it's 900 degrees, has an atmospheric pressure equal to 1000 feet below the ocean, and rains sulfuric acid there." Maybe not the last part.

You're right

I have an ass. I have legs. I do not have breasts.

Charge phone or make a call.... hmmmm....

Something bumps into another thing in the oort cloud, and sends a comet towards Earth. We'll see it at about the orbit of Saturn (probably found by an amateur), and we'll have about two years -max- to kiss our asses goodbye.

You state three requirements to get you to 'believe' in global warming. The first is the existence of anthropogenic global climate change. You are, quite simply, wrong in thinking that this must be proven to exist.

I see you do not contend that the world is cooling, or staying the same temperature. I'll also assume you think the world is heating. There is, in fact, good evidence for this - Mars and Jupiter's temperature have gone up since we started shooting probes out there in the 70s. So let's just all agree that the earth, and the entire solar system is heating. (yes, sun, I am disappoint.)

Well, alright, we agree that the earth is heating, so I guess now we've got to prove that it's a bad thing. Would you like to tell me how any 'educated' guess about the future can be 'supported'? Face it, there are 100s of climate models running on computers around the world, and they all say that, yeah, CO2 will lead to sea level rise, and Bangladesh is screwed. End of story.

I'm not disagreeing with you that we should switch to nuclear (and solar, and wind...) power, but what you are doing by questioning anthropogenic global climate change does the entire world a disservice. Climate change has the ability to fuck up our grand kid's lives, and we need to do something about it, regardless if we (humans) caused this climate change or not.

I'd just like to add that people who do not understand the Carbon cycle are idiots. Taxing cow farts? Where does the Carbon in cow farts come from. grass? Wow, nice little closed cycle there. The reason we've (presumably) been screwing ourselves over is the digging up and burning of fossil fuels, and that's about it.

You've got two choices: Sit there and take it like a man, or start meddling with the drones. Wait a month or so before you start meddling with the drones.

Eventually, morale at your business will be zero. You will have the insight that one should mind their own business, and hopefully someone else will, too.