Yesterday’s Thoughts

One of James Fallows’ readers comments on teaching to students in China and their obsession with the standardized test (gaokao) that will determine their future.

The only thing that matters is the test, and doing well on the test is a matter of memorizing a number of decontextualized facts. The worst affect by far of the exam system is that it creates a distorted and poverty stricken idea of what education is and how to engage in it. These students hunger for real engagement, real knowledge, real education, but they don’t know what it is or how to look for it.

The thing that bothers me more than anything else, though, is that the educational system in the U.S. is being pushed down the same road. The increasing emphasis on standardized testing, something which teachers almost universally deplore, is leading to the Sinification of American education. If things continue in the direction they are going, the U.S. will soon have a system that is just as rigid and anti-creative as China. From having taught in both places, I think the U.S. is already well on its way.

From that point, my mind can go a hundred directions.

For some reason, today, it went to national security. Our educational system has already failed us, with catastrophic consequences for national security. Somehow we were presented with a pastiche of fact about Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, and threats to our national security and neither average Americans, nor elite-educated Americans, were able to shift fact from fiction in any significant numbers.

How many facts does one have to memorize in order to develop the discernment to note that the “facts” one is being presented, have no basis in fact? Or perhaps more correctly, how many “facts” does one have to memorize in order to lose the discernment that those facts have no basis in fact?

Knowing is half the battle. Hypercritical – Ars Technica.

So I’m halfway there!

Evan was named a fashion groundbreaker at Hatch Asheville.

Evan wearing his winning designs

Here’s is the site. HATCHfest.

Here’s my girl wearing her latest creation.

Amy in the park

Thanks to Fashioni.st for the picture.Fashionist: Amy – Dolores Park, SF.

I agree with Dick Cheney!

Asked for his reaction to Bush’s decision [not to pardon Scooter Libby] Cheney said: “Scooter Libby is one of the most capable and honorable men I’ve ever known. He’s been an outstanding public servant throughout his career. He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush’s decision.”

via Cheney Speaks Out on Libby.

Let’s see, who has Dick Cheney known in his life? Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, David Addington, Lynne Cheney, The American Enterprise Institute, Halliburton, William Kristol, the Project for the New American Century.

Yeah, I guess compared to that lot, being a convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements is “capable and honorable”.

Synchronization and cloud services rear the heads once again as Ars has it, “Google closes down lesser-known services, lays off staff.”

I don’t use Jaiku or Dodgeball, although there is sure to be a wailing and gnashing of teeth over the closing of Dodgeball. I had been using Google Noteboook, semi-extensively and although it is not being shutdown, development on Notebook is ceasing, which for my purposes anyway, amounts to the same thing.

This just reinforces one of my current productivity goals: to get all of my stuff in one place. Where is that one place? Really nicely solving this problem is 1) hard and 2) lucrative.

Hm…

See this article: The real cause of the financial crisis, notable for the explanation of the Martingale system.

via Giles.

Apparently 1 out of 53K or so.

I’m not quite one of a kind, but getting there.

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I’m a Lifelong Learning Self-Knowing Health Nut

Ruby Documentation is terse and difficult to navigate. There are some web based solutions, but I am not always on the web, and there are some solutions for keeping your local documentation up to date, but I haven’t automated them.

Ri is the Ruby solution to this problem but the results are not always what you are expecting.

A Simple Enhancement for ri

Words of wisdom from government employee Ronald Reagan:

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.

Ronald Reagan

40th president of US (1911 – 2004)

The Quotations Page.