Comments XIII

Anonymous Lost.   Does that even exist any more?  I prepared a survey for my students on how they are viewing my course so far.  Simple innocuous questions they are.  And it is really anonymous. But will any of them actually believe it is anonymous?  With so much data piracy, scanning, recording, and peeking these days, the whole idea of anonymous may be vanishing.

This variation on Milton's Paradise Lost is simply an update.  Clearly paradise is lost, but it may be that anonymity is gone as well.  I use to believe I could live under the radar, thinking whatever I said would be too unimportant for anyone to take note of.  But today with big data and unlimited storage, I feel that whatever I say will be scanned or read with an eye to key words - most revealing about the message.

Importance. You know how important you are by the hierarchy of how many people stand in line to introduce your speech.  Most of us have just a single person make the introduction.  "Here's our speaker..." and that's it.   Big-shots get two, one to introduce the introducer.  Super-shots get three.   Anyone that gets four introductions, must be of celestial dimensions.   

Intellectuals.  Being an intellectual does not make you smart. 

Ted Cruz.  I might be willing to book passage on the Ted-Cruz-line. I know there will be a lot of time to explore one corner of the world, and I will know the destination.  While he is ridiculed by both parties, he does stand on principle - rare these days.

Nancy Pelosi.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Pelosi has a moderate intelligence, and much to be moderate about.  Her latest confusion is between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  I am simply amazed that someone with her apparent intellectual difficulties can rise to such heights within her party.  Many Democrats (e.g. Chris Van Holland) seem far more erudite, more able, and far more intelligent. Oh well, the Republicans have at least their fair share of the same.   Perhaps we should create a Pelosi Club with delimited extremists of all flavors admitted.  The criteria for admission should be misquoting facts, misstating events, and misrepresenting constituencies.

The snub.  For days, it was argued in the press the "What if" of President Obama meeting or even shaking hands with the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani. But, Rouhani deftly turned the table by simply rejecting any encounter.  The upshot must be that the one regards the other as essentially irrelevant.  One thing is to be rejected.  This is of the everyday for us all.  It is quite another to be relegated to the lower status - irrelevancy.  You just have to feel a little sorry for our President.

Boring.  I just completed a YAW, yet another Webinar.  It was boring, though boring may be the best attribute one can give to a particular event.  Less flattering comments come to mind.

Wisdom.  It was recently suggest to put my wisdom in a bottle.  I responded by saying that if I did so, there would be plenty of room remaining for more interesting contents.

Formal. You may have attended your formal senior prom. Great.  So you know what formal means.  Dressing up and looking good.   In the educational world the word is flung about everywhere.  We have formal and informal knowledge - that learned in classroom or without, formal and informal learning - classroom or without, and also formal and informal space - in the classroom or not.  The word "formal" seems to be reserved for what happens in the classroom, and is to an extent diminished by "informal"  meaning that which is not.  If educators are required to account for individual informal anything, their classes explode from twenty students to multiples of that.  Teachers need, therefore to account for a multiplicity of understandings, to account for misunderstandings, and worse, to account for misconceptions.   This is not good within any system, not just our educational example. Our teachers may be asked to achieve what we ask of no others - ourselves included.

Comments XII

Just a few remarks...

Open and closed systems. Too many problems are regarded as arising in and confined to closed systems.  In fact, many problems are not closed-contained but open, meaning it is a problem that continually interacts with its surroundings or environment.  Solving such problems without an encompassing view can lead to a cascade of system failures.  Closed systems are basically the "in-the-box" systems, where what we do is confined to the often small box in which they are addressed.

The team.   You don't make the team better by merely giving it new uniforms.

Science is what it is.  We may measure the “scientific-ness” of a subject according as the clarity of its postulates and the application of logic to decide truths.   Logic is a catch-all term that implies the application of analysis and reproducible experiments.  Can you name a single scientific endeavor to the contrary?

On Sports: How many times do you want to see the same thing?  The intoxication of the many with sports borders on addiction.  In fact, regular fans have seen almost the same plays and same strategies countless times.  Only slight variations obtain, and even these are similar to past plays.  There must be something about this immersion in the familiar that touches as essential to many more than a few.  It touches with past youth, hopes, and dreams; it touches with past glory.  It is what could have been, if only…

The Common Core is Irrelevant.  In almost every College Algebra course in the USA the curriculum is about the same.  The textbooks are similar.  The quality of instructors is similar.  The difference between classes and schools is the rigor with which the course is taught.   We could go on at length of variations and exceptions on this.   But why bother?  Some instructors, research shows, demand more and get more, while others do not.  The sterile attempt to universalize curriculum and create correspondent standardized testing tries to neutralize this, but the net result is a devolution toward teaching to the test.  This will never abate, much less end. 

Good teacher – bad teacher.  A bad teacher will do more harm than good.  Indeed, it has been demonstrated that if a student has three consecutive years with bad teachers, the damage is irreparable.  Bad teachers come in several flavors, easy, incompetent and unable.    Yet, some apparently bad teachers are not actually bad. They only appear to be bad; they demand performance apparently without helping.  They seem mean without being mean.  It is their style of exacting from students their best.  I had one of these teachers many years ago.  Lectures were kinda good; inter-personality skills were really bad; yet respect was engendered.   I studied like crazy.   I thrived in this antagonistic environment.  I remember this professor foremost.

The Word's Oldest Hate.  What might that be?  The Jews come front and center.  Jews have taken their lumps in history across time.  There are other nominees.  These include scientific discovery facing a barrage of the status quo. Also, disquieting are the hates of suffrage, slavery, prostitution, nonconformity, conformity, Christianity, tribal dominance, racism,and more. The oldest arise from at least four of the ancient seven deadly sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

Vice President Biden.  You have to credit Joe Biden for loyalty, even though possibly errant.  He appears to be seeking support for a presidential bid, though he really has little chance of winning an election.  His gaffs are legend; his role in the current administration is minor.  Yet he continues on.  Could it be he is the surrogate or alternative candidate for Hillary Clinton, who seems to be running, but will not announce.   Clinton (i.e. Rodham)  is continually under pressure for what her plans may be.  A Biden candidacy deflects some of this.  Biden is a decent man, but not exactly of the presidential timber the country need - in my view. Clinton may be viable, but anyone would have difficult thriving under the now growing spotlight of who comes next.

Enough is Enough.  Perhaps you heard, "Students in one Iowa school district this year are attending school Monday through Thursday, with Fridays available for teachers' professional development as well as enrichment, remedial or college-level instruction for students. This summer, state lawmakers redefined the school year as 1,080 hours, or 180 days, but allowed districts to determine how to meet the requirements. Other districts nationwide are adopting alternate schedules to save money on busing, staffing and utilities." http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/09/18/04fourdays.h33.html?tkn=WTCCrVPVdai8ogZeuIaYFR5NoQ%2Bt8kMnDWgf&cmp=clp-sb-ascd

Well this is interesting and at first blush enlightening. It forces teacher to compress by 20% their curriculum , while giving them for time for professional development. This is admirable on the one side, but on the other, it indicates the teacher need more professional development.  However, the courses they teach at the standards level far diminishes what they have learned in all their previous years in middle school, high school,  and even college.  One could compare the introduction of a day each week in the lives of all citizens for training in balancing a check book, or on safe driving, or managing household finances.  All these seem to be equipment we have;  so, why do we need further training?

Now students emerging from the four day teaching/learning week will have one common expectation.  A four day work week.  Don't worry, the intellectuals will fully dress the justification in wrappers of gold and silver from self-improvement time, to better parenting time, to reflection time.  None of them will mention more time for TV or video games.  Forget the 2/7 of every week folks have had for that in generations past.  All problems will be resolved when we have 3/7 of the week.   

Comments XI

• New term.   I think someone inside the beltway referred to the new normal (negotiating with the Syrians to divest themselves of chemical weapons) as a "brain fart."  Wow.  I'm brain-farted-impressed.
  
  
• Kerry and the Russians.   John Kerry will meet with the Russian foreign minister tomorrow.  The Syrians agree to give up their chemical weapons.  The net result?   A long protracted negotiation where by the Syrians can continue to prosecute their mission against the insurgents,now and years into the future.  What more could Assad hope for?  What more could our President hope for?  What more could Vladimir Putin hope for?  All of these persons are winners.  Assad gets a few more years before he is killed by opponents; Putin continues as Russia's Czar for decades. Only problem is the US continues its slide into international oblivion.  
   
• Hillary. Judging by Hillary's response to the new(est) normal, I believe it seems apparent that (1) she views Kerry is running in 2016, and (2) she views Kerry to be a competitor.  I am surprised that few have taken Kerry's obeisance to Obama's policies are not an indicator of his goals.
  
  
• Bashar Assad, like his father before him, having determined the weakened position and total lack of resolve of the United States, has called the bluff of the US and issued his own threat of retaliation in the event of a US led military strike against his country.  The beleaguered US President, likely out of his depth on international and terrorist dealings, must be perplexed.  Now what will be his counter move?  I suspect the US will walk away - possible with a token strike, enough to declare the message has been delivered and defeat assured.  (9/9/13)
  
  The President, an acknowledged master at working the US system and its arcane rules of relations, is facing a contingent that simply does not accept, adhere, or function by such rules.
  
  With this fluidity of action, we now have an inadvertent(?) comment by Secretary of State John Kerry that a strike by the US could possibly be avoided by Syria giving up all its chemical weapons.  The rejoinder from Russia seems to have given this option a life.  Russia knows, but we may not, this constitutes a lengthy delaying action for any action by the US.  Syria knows that by so agreeing they may need to give up some chemical weapon stores.  However, most are now so well hidden that a full accounting is impossible.  Thus, President Obama can rejoice that his mission is achieved - no more chemical weapons to be applied - and without firing a shot.  The other world has sustained the further weakening of the US.  All said, nothing has changed. The US has resumed its decline, now as the dupe of minor powers.
• Vincent van Gogh.  A new painting by this master has been discovered, Sunset at Montmajour..  See, http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/world/europe/netherlands-van-gogh-new-painting/?hpt=hp_inthenews.  He never sold a painting; he seemed to be a failure at everything attempted.  Yet he continued painting, once he discovered this venue.  In earlier days, I wondered what inspired and propelled him to continue his quest for art.  However...  The genius, despite constant and continuous defeats, understands and knows the value of his/her production, and carries on regardless, feeling assured of future vindication. For van Gogh, it has become a reality.  The master, if returning from the dead after so long a period, would not be surprised.  Maybe he would question why it took so long.
   
• It's all in a word. The most terrible weapon in the arsenal of mankind is the word.
• Lies.  What does it take to kill a lie?  Sometimes you have to kill it twice.

• Secretary of State John Kerry.  Judging by his slobbering fidelity to the President's rather unclear and vacillating  policy on Syria, I assume Kerry is in the run for the 2016 Presidency.   But what to do about Hillary?  Her assessment to "do something forceful" is so vague it shields her against future recriminations.  (Hate to go political - but  there you have it.)
• Bashar Assad: “If Obama was strong, he would have said publicly: ‘We have no evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian state.’ He would have said publicly: ‘The only way to proceed is through UN investigations. We therefore refer everything to the Security Council.’ But Obama is weak because he is facing pressure from within the United States,” Assad said, according to a translation of his interview with Le Figaro in The Telegraph.
  
  In this remarkable statement, we see Assad appealing to his base, much of the Islamic world, where weakness is the mortal sin.   As to the weakness, the British seem to concur, and also even the French, who have made a science of weakness and appeasement.
  
  
• Extreme Words.  These days, Americans have trouble expressing themselves except in the extreme.  Currently, the big words are:  Phenomenal,Fantastic, Amazing, Awesome, Incredible,Wonderful
  
  Unless the expression is in the extreme, it has little value.  Whatever happened to subtlety?  Whatever happened to measured and pinpointed commentary?  Gone, I guess.
• Math riddle.  What can you add but never subtract? Answer: Salt on your burger; sugar in your coffee, hate in your speech, threats offered, promises to your love.