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M.Ed. Students exhibit misconceptions or deviations from universally accepted concepts. Constructivists trace these misconceptions back' to the unique conceptual frames of reference of students. Ausubel (1985:82) named prior knowledge as the single most important factor influencing learning. New teaching strategies were designed to prevent or eliminate these misconceptions. The strategies are based on guidelines postulated by researchers such as Posner and his co-workers (1982:211). Several strategies use media to motivate students or provide a more concrete base for concept formation. The side effects of the utilization of media are important to designers and users of media. An empirical investigation was launched to determine whether media could also stimulate the formation of misconceptions. The investigation indicated that two dimensional representations of atoms, molecules and ion lattices can lead to misconceptions. Greater care should be taken in the selection of illustrations for textbooks and other media. If these side effects are taken into account by media designers and teachers, media can play a major role in the prevention and elimination of misconceptions.

Kanazawa (2007) offers an explanation for the variation across countries of average in- telligence. It is based on the idea that human intelligence is a domain specific adaptation and that both temperature and the distance from some putative point of origin are proxies for the degree of novelty that humans in a country have experienced. However, the argument ignores many other considerations and is a priori weak and the data used questionable. A particular problem is that in calculating distances between countries it implicitly assumes that the earth is flat. This makes all the estimates biased and unreliable.

Kanazawa (2007) offers an explanation for the variation across countries of average intelligence. It is based on the idea human intelligence is a domain specific adaptation and that both temperature and the distance from some putative point of origin are proxies for the degree of novelty that humans in a country have experienced. However the argument ignores many other considerations and is a priori weak and the data used questionable. A particular problem is that in calculating distances between countries it implicitly assumes that the earth is flat. This makes all the estimates biased and unreliable. Not applicable