educational outcomes are not an especially blue state / red state thing. California doesn't do very well, Utah does.
I wouldn't be surprised if a big part of that is California getting worse. I grew up when we made big investments in education. Not just university education (where tuition was minimal) but at every level. We stopped.
Now, you can build up a couple of decades worth of debt even at a state college. And the quality of primary and secondary education (just in public schools, not even looking at private ones, where available) varies dramatically, depending on where you live.
We didn't have to do that. We chose to do that. The state government manages to find big bucks for projects with marginal benefits. (See the high speed rail boondoggle. It's a nice idea in theory. In reality? No.) But serious money for the basics? Not really. And it's not like Republican reactionaries and radical libertarians have any clout around here. These are the priorities of politicians on the left.
I can hope for an equivalent to the Michigan "Fix the damn roads!" campaign. But I sure don't see any politician who seem interested.
I'm actually pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Far less bad than I had expected. Far less.
I read some griping about Putin being "honored" by being welcomed on US soil. Putin may feel honored (fat chance!). But will anyone else be impressed? Will anyone change their opinion of Putin? No and No.
Or, you could just go: pick the first of the remaining choices the first time, then the second the next, then the third (if there happens to be one). Repeat as you go thru the test.
True randomness, or even pseudo- randomness, isn't required. The folks creating the test will have done all the randomizing necessary
a kid who aces his college boards is probably pretty smart
Or clever enough that you can get a pretty high, at least way above chance, score on a multiple choice test if you eliminate the (2, sometimes 3) obviously wrong choices and then just guess at random. (Versus guessing at random among all 5. Or, worse, just leaving it blank.)
If asked how I know, I'll take the 5th, thank you.
I think that the difference between "smart" and "clever" is mostly a matter of culture (if that's the right term). It's about what you are good at.
Anybody can be clever. But to be "smart" you have to do well at the things that are valued by the formal education system. Not necessarily be highly educated. But able to do those kinds of things.
For example, a great auto mechanic may have struggled to get thru high school. But can be very clever when it comes to figuring out how to fix, or enhance, something mechanical. The formal education system doesn't reward those kinds of abilities, so he very probably doesn't get labeled smart. But nobody would argue against clever.
In contrast, you can be a Nobel Prize winner in physics or chemistry but struggle to do simple cooking or basic home maintenance, let alone auto repair. Which makes you smart, brilliant even, but definitely not clever.
sneering at someone's ignorance, particularly in the matter of taste, immediately marks one out as a member of the kind of "elites" that have understandably caused such vitriolic resentment.
I know a fair number of unarguably working class folks whose immediate reaction to Trump's redecorated Oval Office was immediate sneering.
Looks like a relatively normal room. I'd describe it as grad student / working class (i. e. without a lot of excess cash), but with good taste.
In short, the inverse of excess money and no taste.
Thank your lucky stars that Strump hasn't razed the White House and replaced it with a garish casino.
Yet. Gotta save a few big projects for the third term.
It isn't just that the design is tasteless. It's that the execution is so poor. I think "sloppy" is the word I'm looking for.
It's like no competent craftsmen could be found to do it. Although most likely nobody looked, if they had there might have been a derth of people willing to work under any terms except cash in advance. A poor reputation can do that.
Taking a hard turn in a different direction:
Headline in today's Washington Post: "House issues subpoena for Epstein files". Which is good to know. (And about time, considering how the Trump Justice Department has stonewalled.)
But what got me was the subhead: "It’s unclear how the Justice Department will respond to the request." Do you morons not know? It's not a request. It's an order! Not that the Trump administration recognizes the distinction.
As long as I can remember, when bad jobs numbers come out, the President reacts by talking about how he will act, or how he wants Congress to act, to get the economy back on track. Today, when a bad job reports came out, the Presidential response was to fire the (non-partisan) head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shoot the Messenger at its finest.
Speaking of heroes, I note that the 2028 Olympics are currently scheduled for Los Angeles. Two problems there:
1) Getting international tourists, or even just Olympic athletes, into and safely back out of the country. I belong to an organization which holds international conferences. It is sufficiently difficult for would-be attendees to get visas that attendance plummets when we hold one in the US. Which will doubtless hold down Olympic tourism. Not to mention the increasing fondness of the current administration for arbitrarily holding up travelers, even those with impeccable paperwork.
2) Trump would doubtless find it impossible to resist (not that he'd try) showing up and making the whole thing all about him -- see "hero in his own mind". To see how this might go, consider the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
I'm already seeing calls here for Los Angeles to bail on the whole thing. Those tend, so far, to focus both on those issues, as well as the legal requirement that major international events like this have security handled by the Secret Service, with help from the FBI and Homeland Security. Currently Federal law enforcement agencies are, thanks to ICE, not in good oder in LA (or California generally).
Plus, staging the Olympics is expensive. Local government budgets are already strained, and nobody can see Trump kicking in financial support. If anything, he might decide to bill LA for the security costs.
I wish I could say I'm surprised.
I think a more accurate opening line might refer to "the Attorney General" or "senior political appointees in the Justice Department". Something that would make clear that this is not (hoping that it is not, at least yet) something that everybody in the Department of Justice is on board with, and rolling out to attorneys in the rest of the government.
Michael, this is just way cool!
When you feel like the software is mostly together, is it something you would be willing to share? Sell? (I hesitate to suggest beta test. ;-)
Perhaps the greatest calculator ... was Kepler
Perhaps. But the ladies who did all the calculations for the Mercury and Apollo Projects were no slouches either. Men's lives hung on their work. As the story goes, John Glenn asked explicitly for Katherine Johnson to do the calculations for his flight. He wouldn't trust anyone else with his safety.
Why spent minutes (at minimum) on the screen when a sketch on paper takes seconds?
Tablets are getting better at imitating what paper and pencil do. But it's still a pale imitation. And, from what I've seen, the rate of progress towards duplicating it as slowed markedly.
I suppose I can see how, if everybody who knows how to read** has a phone/computer in their hip pocket, knowing basic arithmetic might be less critical than it once was. I'm not convinced, mind, but I can see that it might be.
** At the rate software is improving, I suppose computers will be able to read to us, and write down what we say as well. The reactionaries will no doubt be delighted if illiteracy once again becomes the norm. /snark
New Math was the same sort of thing. It pushed a much broader view of what math was than just the algorithms. Look, long division is done the way it is because hundreds of years of experience informs us that it's the best way to get the right answers when you have to do a hundred division problems a day, day after day. New Math failed when the teachers pushed the broader view but didn't teach the mechanics.
The trouble with New Math was that it was (apparently) designed by mathematicians. Mathematicians who had forgotten that a) you have to build the foundations (mechanics, as Michael says) first. And that b) normal people are not mathematicians -- and that's 99.99% (or more) of the population. They neither care nor need to know the theoretical underpinnings. They just need to know how to do basic arithmetic reliably.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Giving Away the Store”
educational outcomes are not an especially blue state / red state thing. California doesn't do very well, Utah does.
I wouldn't be surprised if a big part of that is California getting worse. I grew up when we made big investments in education. Not just university education (where tuition was minimal) but at every level. We stopped.
Now, you can build up a couple of decades worth of debt even at a state college. And the quality of primary and secondary education (just in public schools, not even looking at private ones, where available) varies dramatically, depending on where you live.
We didn't have to do that. We chose to do that. The state government manages to find big bucks for projects with marginal benefits. (See the high speed rail boondoggle. It's a nice idea in theory. In reality? No.) But serious money for the basics? Not really. And it's not like Republican reactionaries and radical libertarians have any clout around here. These are the priorities of politicians on the left.
I can hope for an equivalent to the Michigan "Fix the damn roads!" campaign. But I sure don't see any politician who seem interested.
"
I'm actually pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Far less bad than I had expected. Far less.
I read some griping about Putin being "honored" by being welcomed on US soil. Putin may feel honored (fat chance!). But will anyone else be impressed? Will anyone change their opinion of Putin? No and No.
On “A New Gilded Age”
Or, you could just go: pick the first of the remaining choices the first time, then the second the next, then the third (if there happens to be one). Repeat as you go thru the test.
True randomness, or even pseudo- randomness, isn't required. The folks creating the test will have done all the randomizing necessary
"
a kid who aces his college boards is probably pretty smart
Or clever enough that you can get a pretty high, at least way above chance, score on a multiple choice test if you eliminate the (2, sometimes 3) obviously wrong choices and then just guess at random. (Versus guessing at random among all 5. Or, worse, just leaving it blank.)
If asked how I know, I'll take the 5th, thank you.
"
I think that the difference between "smart" and "clever" is mostly a matter of culture (if that's the right term). It's about what you are good at.
Anybody can be clever. But to be "smart" you have to do well at the things that are valued by the formal education system. Not necessarily be highly educated. But able to do those kinds of things.
For example, a great auto mechanic may have struggled to get thru high school. But can be very clever when it comes to figuring out how to fix, or enhance, something mechanical. The formal education system doesn't reward those kinds of abilities, so he very probably doesn't get labeled smart. But nobody would argue against clever.
In contrast, you can be a Nobel Prize winner in physics or chemistry but struggle to do simple cooking or basic home maintenance, let alone auto repair. Which makes you smart, brilliant even, but definitely not clever.
"
sneering at someone's ignorance, particularly in the matter of taste, immediately marks one out as a member of the kind of "elites" that have understandably caused such vitriolic resentment.
I know a fair number of unarguably working class folks whose immediate reaction to Trump's redecorated Oval Office was immediate sneering.
"
Looks like a relatively normal room. I'd describe it as grad student / working class (i. e. without a lot of excess cash), but with good taste.
In short, the inverse of excess money and no taste.
"
Thank your lucky stars that Strump hasn't razed the White House and replaced it with a garish casino.
Yet. Gotta save a few big projects for the third term.
"
It isn't just that the design is tasteless. It's that the execution is so poor. I think "sloppy" is the word I'm looking for.
It's like no competent craftsmen could be found to do it. Although most likely nobody looked, if they had there might have been a derth of people willing to work under any terms except cash in advance. A poor reputation can do that.
"
"I know fully well how vulgar that is and I did it on purpose!'.
Well, we don't have to consider that. Trump has no clue how vulgar it is.
On “An open thread”
I suspect pretty much all of us would be the intern from hell, for anyone daft enough to take us on.
"
"Paid or unpaid?" sounds to me like she could make good use of them, but has no budget to pay them. If you were serious, apply and find out.
"
I have serious problems with anyone whose handwriting is that good. And that goes double for anyone working in IT.
"
Taking a hard turn in a different direction:
Headline in today's Washington Post: "House issues subpoena for Epstein files". Which is good to know. (And about time, considering how the Trump Justice Department has stonewalled.)
But what got me was the subhead: "It’s unclear how the Justice Department will respond to the request." Do you morons not know? It's not a request. It's an order! Not that the Trump administration recognizes the distinction.
"
Care to elaborate on that, Charles?
"
As long as I can remember, when bad jobs numbers come out, the President reacts by talking about how he will act, or how he wants Congress to act, to get the economy back on track. Today, when a bad job reports came out, the Presidential response was to fire the (non-partisan) head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shoot the Messenger at its finest.
On “The law of the letter”
Still be way sooner than I'd get anything similar coded myself.
On “Everyone is a hero in their own story”
Speaking of heroes, I note that the 2028 Olympics are currently scheduled for Los Angeles. Two problems there:
1) Getting international tourists, or even just Olympic athletes, into and safely back out of the country. I belong to an organization which holds international conferences. It is sufficiently difficult for would-be attendees to get visas that attendance plummets when we hold one in the US. Which will doubtless hold down Olympic tourism. Not to mention the increasing fondness of the current administration for arbitrarily holding up travelers, even those with impeccable paperwork.
2) Trump would doubtless find it impossible to resist (not that he'd try) showing up and making the whole thing all about him -- see "hero in his own mind". To see how this might go, consider the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
I'm already seeing calls here for Los Angeles to bail on the whole thing. Those tend, so far, to focus both on those issues, as well as the legal requirement that major international events like this have security handled by the Secret Service, with help from the FBI and Homeland Security. Currently Federal law enforcement agencies are, thanks to ICE, not in good oder in LA (or California generally).
Plus, staging the Olympics is expensive. Local government budgets are already strained, and nobody can see Trump kicking in financial support. If anything, he might decide to bill LA for the security costs.
"
I wish I could say I'm surprised.
I think a more accurate opening line might refer to "the Attorney General" or "senior political appointees in the Justice Department". Something that would make clear that this is not (hoping that it is not, at least yet) something that everybody in the Department of Justice is on board with, and rolling out to attorneys in the rest of the government.
On “The law of the letter”
Michael, this is just way cool!
When you feel like the software is mostly together, is it something you would be willing to share? Sell? (I hesitate to suggest beta test. ;-)
"
Perhaps the greatest calculator ... was Kepler
Perhaps. But the ladies who did all the calculations for the Mercury and Apollo Projects were no slouches either. Men's lives hung on their work. As the story goes, John Glenn asked explicitly for Katherine Johnson to do the calculations for his flight. He wouldn't trust anyone else with his safety.
"
Why spent minutes (at minimum) on the screen when a sketch on paper takes seconds?
Tablets are getting better at imitating what paper and pencil do. But it's still a pale imitation. And, from what I've seen, the rate of progress towards duplicating it as slowed markedly.
"
All this math talk has me celebrating pi, but not exactly.
Hmmm. I'm thinking exactly, but not precisely.
"
I suppose I can see how, if everybody who knows how to read** has a phone/computer in their hip pocket, knowing basic arithmetic might be less critical than it once was. I'm not convinced, mind, but I can see that it might be.
** At the rate software is improving, I suppose computers will be able to read to us, and write down what we say as well. The reactionaries will no doubt be delighted if illiteracy once again becomes the norm. /snark
"
New Math was the same sort of thing. It pushed a much broader view of what math was than just the algorithms. Look, long division is done the way it is because hundreds of years of experience informs us that it's the best way to get the right answers when you have to do a hundred division problems a day, day after day. New Math failed when the teachers pushed the broader view but didn't teach the mechanics.
The trouble with New Math was that it was (apparently) designed by mathematicians. Mathematicians who had forgotten that a) you have to build the foundations (mechanics, as Michael says) first. And that b) normal people are not mathematicians -- and that's 99.99% (or more) of the population. They neither care nor need to know the theoretical underpinnings. They just need to know how to do basic arithmetic reliably.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.