… to a webcomic (“xkcd“) that I just stumbled across. It’s kinda odd but has the occasional math/science bent that endears it to me. (“Dr. Elizabeth? I accidentally took the Fourier transform of my cat” or “Schroedinger’s Comic“) It also has a flash of geek-inspired sentimentality (“My normal approach is useless here.“) that tugs at my own well-buried heart strings.
It’s worth a look, in my opinion.
I’m really not a fan of the me-too blog, which just strings together links to the original thoughts of other. But I saw this on Cosmic Variance and thought it was brilliant, so here we go: “Lessons from Monopoly“. It’s an interesting analysis of the socio-economic implications of the Parker Brothers game. As seems to be the case (in my opinion) every time critical thinking is applied to the underpinnings of our economy, it turns out to be a good argument against the current winner-take-all capitalism worship which infects this nation.
The end of a democracy comes when participants start gaming the rules to ensure particular outcomes, rather than following the rules and allowing voters an honest chance to influence government. We have reached and, I would say, starting wading across that Rubicon.
Today, another madness has been added to the sad litany of rules-gaming and partisan manipulation.
Today, at least, nothing. In a curiously intense summer primary contest for the state Board of Education, the day was won by people who believe that the science standards should reflect, you know, actual science. Their opponents were a cabal of Intelligent Design boosters. There’s a nice wrap-up at Forbes.com and a more gung-ho, in-your-face summary at Thoughts from Kansas.
The Forbes piece quotes a Kansan named Ryan Cole, “I feel like if you give two sides of something, most people are intelligent enough to make up their own minds.” I wonder how many ID proponents would be OK if the history course started teaching Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code version of early Christianity, because after all, millions of people have invested in it.
Yay for the good guys that will put Kansas back into the mainstream on science education. But boo for all of us that we, a supposedly advanced and enlightened nation, need to fight this same battle over and over again.
A lot of attention lately has been focused on “presidential signing statements” — declarations by the President as to how he intends to interpret the statutues he signs into law. Though the signing statement has existed for the history of the Republic, the current President has grotesquely expanded its use. In a report by the American Bar Association, it is noted that, from the founding of the Republic through the inauguration of President George Walker Bush, the signing statement had been used fewer than 600 times. In President Bush’s six years, he has issued over 800 such signing statements. Moreover, he has aggressively used these statements to stake out his political position, to override Congressional intent, and to establish himself as the only arbiter of the constitutionality of his actions.
What are the implications for the Republic?
A week or so ago (2006 July 23), the New York Times had an article (“Conspiracy Theories 101” by Stanley Fish) detailing a brouhaha surrounding Kevin Barrett. Mr. Barrett is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin who has gotten into hot water because he shared with his students his strong conviction that the World Trade Centers were destroyed not by Islamic terrorists but by the American government itself. Mr. Fish uses the occasion of Mr. Barrett’s controversy to expound the “correct” view of academic freedom, which Mr. Fish thinks both sides have gotten wrong in the Barrett debate. I think he misses the point.
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So there’s been some buzz about the unscripted, undiplomatic, and somewhat profane remarks of President Bush in Russia, when he didn’t know a microphone was “hot”. (Bush’s Policy Chit-Chat: Undiplomatic Prose – New York Times). Or did he? I don’t want to get all tinfoil-hat, but…
I saw an article in the New York Times (Schoolbooks Are Given F’s in Originality; 2006 July 13) that detailed a controversy broiling for some American history textbooks. It seems that, in describing the 9/11 attacks, the books A History of the United States and America: Pathways to the Present use virtually identical language. Apparently several other sets of passages dealing with recent history are also substantially the same.
However, the scandal is not what you think.
Lately I’ve been on a merciless campaign to reduce the paperwork clutter in my lab/office/classroom. Today I dove into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet (because obviously, bottom drawer = hard to acess = most moldly junk.) and came across an envelope containing the qualifying exam I had to take when starting grad school at Stanford lo those many years ago. The very first piece of paper in the envelope was a cover letter from Dr. Bob Laughlin, who almost single-handedly crafted the qual.
In reading it over, I realized that — consciously or not — it epitomizes a number of common assumptions about testing in physics, or at least, in my teaching of physics. So for insights into the tortured past that made me the teacher I am 🙂 read on.
In cleaning out a file cabinet, I came across the Qualifying Exam that I had to take in order to pursue a degree in Physics at Stanford University. On top was a cover letter by Dr. Bob Laughlin, which I reproduce below. Hopefully he won’t have any issue with that! 🙂