Politics on the Brain

Occasionally, Pencils Down strays away from its math education mission statement and ventures into the world of politics. I don't see any way to avoid this, since part of being sentient is having one's own opinions and part of being a blogger is voicing them. My own position on the political continuum is roughly at the midpoint. I tend to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I am a registered Independent and have happily voted for members of both major parties and several third-party candidates. I have friends who fall to the far right and far left of the field, and I argue with all of them.

Curiously, one of the most common arguments is of what exactly defines a Liberal and a Conservative. Many people choose to define it by what positions they take on certain issues, but that doesn't speak to controversies yet to be unveiled. Others use those political labels and the names of their party interchangeably, despite the fact that the party platforms have slid up and down the spectrum, even flip-flopping over the years. I read definitions in a political science textbook once that have stuck with me for both simplicity and accuracy. In short, a to be conservative means to look for the solution to a problem in the past. When faced with a new dilemma, they will attempt to apply the solution that has always worked with similar issues before. A liberal, when confronted with a new problem, will tend to dream up an entirely new solution. They prefer the untested to the status quo.

There is nothing to stop people for employing both methods in differing areas of life. I have already admitted to doing so. But what exactly causes a person to be one way or the other. It's the age-old nature vs. nurture argument, and nature has recently released some new results. Some psychologists at New York University have employed a simple test to investigate political persuasion. Test subjects were first asked to rate their political persuasion, 1 being conservative and 5 being liberal. Then the were each shown a different series of two letters, M and W. Regardless of the pattern, one letter was always more prevalent, showing up 80% of the time. The researchers found that when asked to match letters with the computer, subjects identifying with conservativism were more likely to "incorrectly" choose the dominant letter even when shown the other one. Liberals had a slightly "better" results, showing a greater ability to choose the "correct" letter even though it appeared far less frequently.

It is important to note that even if this experiment can be repeated, it doesn't imply that one position is evolutionarily more adaptive. There have been plenty of times in history when the combined selection pressures have favored either a liberal or a conservative approach, so one can not be said to be more adaptive than the other. I suspect that applying a healthy dose of both is the most pragmatic way to go about it.

They Don't Know Numbers

"He doesn't know numbers; he only knows beads." -Matthew Broderick as Richard Feynman, Infinity

It seems the Arab world is attempting to take a step backward in order to go forward. They are adopting an adding technology that goes back millenia.

Mental arithmetic is a form of calculation that does not involve the use of any physical or external gadgets, such as calculators or computers. The skill is developed early through the use of the abacus. Eventually children are trained to calculate large numbers in seconds with accuracy and speed.

Though the popular image of an abacus is correctly attributed to the Chinese, the actual pebble replacement system was used first in Babylon. It still is the fastest pre-electronic way to do simple arithmetic, beating even today's standard algorithm. Though, the last time I checked, it is both a physical and external gadget. The above program, known as Universal Concept of Mental Arithmetic System (UCMAS,) allegedly uses the abacus to improve mental arithmetic. For the life of me, I don't see how the abacus could possible be useful for this. It only requires students to be able to count as high as the base of their numbering system (i.e. ten) and then to understand the concept of place value. Sure it's really fast by analog standards, but if it's speed you're looking for, go digital and electronic. If you want to teach mental math, teach some form of pencil/paper algorithm and provide memory drills.

Monkey Math

Elsa Addessi, a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome, Italy, has demonstrated a surprisingly advanced concept of numerosity in capuchin monkeys. The test subjects were given coins of differing "value," which could be traded for quantities of peanuts. While some of the animals showed preference for color or quantity, several were able to consistently maximize their payoff. While the monkeys are not technically adding, they are showing both the ability to understand the use of symbols and concepts like "more than" and "less than." This is still pretty impressive considering they diverged from us 65 million years ago.

Sleeping Around

There was an article in the Chicago Tribune the other day that called into question the results of nearly every sex survey from Kinsey to the present. It is popularly believed, and supported by surveys, that men have more sexual partners on average than women. Mathematicians know this is a logical fallacy.

He provided a proof, called the High School Prom Theorem:

"Each girl is asked to give the number of boys she danced with. These numbers are then added up, giving a number G. The same information is then obtained from the boys, giving a number B. Theorem: G=B. Proof: Both G and B are equal to C, the number of couples who danced together at the prom."

Researchers speculate that one of two things is happening, either the men are going outside of the interviewed population for their sexual escapades or both genders are simply lying. I'm sure it's a bit of both.

A couple of things bothered me about the article. First, the article interchanged the words median, mean, and average continuously, which I find quite irritating, since they are not necessarily the same. Second, although I can clearly see why the arithmetic mean number of copulations must be the same for both genders of a heterosexual population, I'm not sure that really tells us anything about relative promiscuity.

Let's say we define promiscuity as having more than one sexual partners in relative simultaneity. Then we imagine a graph of heterosexual pairings that reflects the common alpha-male situation. There are 10 men and 10 women. One studly/slutty dude hooks up with 4 of the women. Two other men and women engage in monogamous coitus. The rest go home alone. If we use a simple arithmetic mean, then both genders engage in 0.6 sexual encounters. However, that one guy accounts for 2/3 of the men's numbers. If you randomly selected a guy from the room, there is a 1/10 chance of him being promiscuous, by my definition. The same cannot be said for the girls, as none of them had more than one partner. So in this sense, men can be said to sleep around more.

You could translate this into a weighted average as well. If you assign weights of 0 to not promiscuous and 1 to promiscuous, then the men achieve a weighted average of 0.4 and the women of 0.0. This ranking puts the men ahead in the slut department.

It's important when applying mathematical computations to real life situations that the math is not only correct, but non-trivial. And the method you use can significantly affect the outcome, as is evidenced here.

When Good Science and Bad Reporting Collide

The University of Virginia and Harvard recently released the results of a study comparing student science achievement in high school and college. My news feed-reader has been full of articles, in which reporters skilled in selling newspapers take a crack at scientific reasoning. This recent one from the Washington Post is particularly irritating to me, as it suggests that debates over secondary science curricula are now superfluous.

I love math. I believe mathematical education is absolutely imperative for all students at all levels. But I've got to give some props to science, too. The study simply found that students' experience in a particular science (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.) was not a strong predictor of success in another of those sciences, whereas math excellence was a predictor for success in all science fields. Excluding the fact that science is little more than applied math, let's look at the logic of this finding. The sciences have always been taught separately from one another. The distinction is somewhat arbitrarily related to scale. These smaller chunks are easier to teach and to learn, but all of them are necessary for a complete understanding of nature. Mathematical thinking is necessary to all three, but then so is reading comprehension, so these findings seem somewhat immature to me. While the results may prove useful to college admittions departments, I don't think they ought to be used to determine high school science curricula.

As of 2005, the percentage of high school graduates who enrolled in post-secondary the Fall after graduation had risen to 70%. That's high compared to our parents' generation, but it still leaves 30% who don't attend. Of course, there is some fuzziness in the numbers. Some students will take time off in between and some of those who attend will drop out after only a semester. But the point stands. Not all kids go to college. I would really like those people to have enough science reasoning to make their way in the world. They need to have enough bio to make sound health decisions, or to pass judgment on stem cell research and the like. They need the chemistry to understand the harmful effects of pollution. They need the physics to understand why to keep a safe following distance and not to drive too fast.

Both science and math are all around us. Our public education system is supposed to give kids all that they will need to be good citizens, and that has to include a healthy dose of math and all sciences. Excluding the latter in favor of the former may help out college professors, but it does our students and our nation a great disservice.

Angel of Death...Or Serial Killer?

For those of you who aren't familiar with this story and are therefore both confused and disturbed, let me explain. A cat in Rhode Island is making news with his alleged ability to predict the exact time that human beings will visit the litter box in the sky. Doctors feel confident enough about his track record that they are writing him up in the New England Journal of Medicine. But it seems to me that they are putting the rosiest spin on the facts. Here is what we know.

Oscar came to live at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center as a kitten two years ago. Since then, he has been spotted making rounds each day, sniffing and nuzzling patients of the third floor dementia unit. At some point, caregivers noticed that he had an apparent tendency to curl up on the bed of the soon-to-be deceased. The correlation has reached a point where hospital staff begin phoning family members as soon as he lays down. What does that conversation sound like, I wonder?

"Mr. Smith, this is Dr. Green calling from the Steere House. You'd better get over here. No, the doctor hasn't seen your father yet today. No, his vitals appear normal. Well, you see, it's Oscar. No, not the Grouch. The Cat. Yes, I said the cat. He's sleeping with your father as we speak. Yes, that is serious. We'll do everything we can until you arrive. Please hurry, and you're welcome."

I'd just like to say, first of all, that if Oscar really is a kitty clairvoyant, then he is certainly hedging his bets. It isn't like he goes to health clubs or figure skating competitions to be Nostradamus. He's predicting death in a dementia unit of a nursing home! I'd say his odds are better than average. But I don't think that's what's actually happening. No, I want to be the first to come right out and say what everyone else is only thinking. Oscar has been the last visitor of some 25 patients in the last two years. Some say that makes him and angel; I say it makes him a suspect. I wonder if anyone has tried removing him from the unit and seeing what happens to the mortality rate? There are many well documented cases of medical serial killers. Involuntary euthanasia, they call it, and Oscar fits the profile to a tee.

So before we go nominating this feline for sainthood, I think we ought to bring in the forensics team. I'll bet we find more than trace elements of deadly dander in the victim's lungs.

Dark Energy and Missing Socks

I finally know where all those missing socks have gone. They're hiding with the "dark energy" in curled up spatial dimensions that are smaller than the Plank length.

Phoning It In

Evidently some software developers at the University of Haifa have created what they are referring to as "Mobile Math Labs." Essentially their software can be installed on any cellular phone, turning it into a graphing/solving calculator. The hope is that students will be able to combine other phone features, like video, to create and perform math experiments. In effect they will be able to create and analyze videos a la Dy/Dan with a single hand-held device. Of course, some will see this as just another way for lazy kids to cheat on their tests. I'll leave it for you to decide. The software is available for download now.

Cross-Purposes and Collegiate Complaints

As I struggle to find where exactly on the political scale of math education I reside, I have to constantly question many things that I once took for granted. One of those things relates to the transition from secondary to post-secondary education. One of the latest tactics that the traditionalists are employing against the reform math programs involves pressure from college professors and deans. They insist that these new programs are not preparing students adequately for the collegiate curriculum. The latest article comes out of Pennsylvania, where a new integrated math program in the public schools is forcing many colleges to adapt their methods.

The first step of problem-solving is to actually determine if a problem exists. In this situation, Pennsylvanians have to determine what they feel the primary purposes of education are, and then see how high college preparation is on the list. Conveniently, their state code lists a Purpose of Education section, and nowhere in it is college even mentioned. It does say that

Public education prepares students for adult life by attending to their intellectual and developmental needs and challenging them to achieve at their highest level possible. In conjunction with families and other community institutions, public education prepares students to become self-directed, life-long learners and responsible, involved citizens.

It wasn't that long ago when most students did not go on to college. University was for the rich white men and everyone else either got a job or got a husband. Fortunately, those days are gone. There is much more equality of opportunity in education and everywhere else. But the rise in post-secondary enrollment creates new issues and debates. Here we see colleges parroting similar complaints of the business community, that essentially the public schools are not operating with their particular agendas in mind. Frankly, I don't see a problem here.

Education is important. That much is clear. It is difficult to get ahead without obtaining new knowledge and skills. Learning is necessary to grow and adapt with a system. But I believe that burden falls largely on the individual. It is each person's choice whether or not to educate themselves. No teacher can teach a student that refuses to learn, and many great men and women have been self-taught. Although there is no "right to an education" in our federal constitution, the Framers certainly realized that an informed citizenry is a prerequisite of democracy. They supported and encouraged each state to develop public education guidelines, so that every child wanting to learn had an opportunity to do so. Not everyone took advantage of the programs, but enough did to make it worth the expense. And there is quite a bit of expense. We spend as much on education in the US as we do on defense, believe it or not. Unfortunately, the complicated administrative bureaucracies swallow most of that funding before it can trickle down to the actual classrooms. Now we are stuck with a system that is hugely inefficient, stupendously expensive, and perpetually maligned.

I firmly believe that we are trying to do way too much. There are so many goals that we aren't really reaching any of them. Let's put aside cultural integration, job training, and even college prep until we can get the simpler goal of "self-directed, life-long learners and responsible, involved citizens." To that end, I think that the two goals of any curriculum, mathematical or otherwise, need 1) teaching students how to teach themselves, and 2)providing them with skills required to be a good citizen. That may very well mean something other than what is considered a "traditional" math curriculum. For example, when in the voting booth or in the jury box, what field must you better understand, statistics or calculus? Yet stat is usually taught as an afterthought in most Algebra II classes.

Colleges can complain all they want. There objections/recommendations are duly noted. But there mission statements are fundamentally different than those of public education, and vice versa. Even now when most students will go on to some form of post-secondary program, the focus of K-12 must remain on civic responsibility rather than collegiate complaints.

Free Agency

Have you ever been a die hard fan of a perpetually losing sports franchise? Have you felt the pain of losing your most talented players to teams with more money and a better shot at a championship? Well that same kind of gut-wrenching loss being felt in city schools nationwide.

Recent initiatives to entice competent math and science teachers has led to a new kind of "school choice" scenario. Teachers in poorer urban districts, tired of being underpaid and under-appreciated, are being gently wooed by suburban schools with more money left under their salary caps. This is exactly the kind of market capitalism that those voucher programs are always failing to provide for students. Imagine if we pushed the sports metaphor further. What if we had some kind of draft lottery, whereby the poorest performing schools can secure the most promising up and comers for the first few years of their careers, before they even have an option at free agency? Then schools would be forced to better support their first and second year teachers. Or what if administrators could broker trades, sending two or three mediocre educators to outlying districts for a really choice pick from another school? That would keep teachers on their toes.

I don't know about everybody else, but I'm ready to try just about an change to the system that will bring in and retain more passionate, well-rounded, and knowledgeable teachers. Although I doubt that we'll be seeing teacher trading cards or bobble-heads any time soon.

When in the Course of Human Events...

I searched far and wide for just the right topic or story to discuss on America's birthday. There's a lot to pick from these days. There's the commutation and probable pardon of convicted Bushie Scooter Libby. There's the on-going war in Iraq, where an apparently unforseeable counter-insurgency is being compared to our own upstart beginnings. And since this is a forum devoted to education, there's always the continuing debate over accountability or the increasingly polarizing "math wars." But none of that really captures the then-and-now dichotomy of our great nation as well as this.

“I think it represents actually, well, America — what New York is. It’s something you expect from a city like this.”

What is this uniquely American event? Why it's Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest, of course. In a world where myriad people starve to death each day, no city represents the spectrum of wealth better than the Big Apple. While people live in the shadows of the subway tunnels or lie helpless in alleyways, a few iron-stomached hopefuls gather at Coney Island in celebration of gluttony, where the sin which may well prove deadliest for our American empire will unleash itself approximately 4 hours after this posting.

“Independence Day is a wonderful time to celebrate our freedoms,” the mayor said, looking rather summery in boat shoes and lightweight slacks. “Now I don’t know what the founding fathers ever thought about this, but the right to eat as many hot dogs as possible — although not expressly named in the Bill of Rights — was no doubt on the minds of the framers.”

The over-eating metaphors abound. In a country where despite medical advances, the current generation may have a shorter life-expectancy than the last due to the epidemic of obesity, our figurative fattiness threatens to undermine this experiment in democracy. We thumb our noses at the famished as we choke down our hot dogs. We laugh in the face of the energy deprived, as we root for stock cars besplattered with the emblems of capitalistic excess as they drive in circles to our delight. When will it be enough? At what point will we be able to push back from the table and say when?

It's hard not to be a hypocrite. Like everyone else, I've grown accustomed to having what I want, when I want it, and more of it than I could possibly need. But if ever I need to be reminded of where that line of selfish behavior leads, I can always take the D, F, Q, or N trains to Coney Island, where the swallowing whole of processed beef entrails is now considered athletic, and the smell of sweat and frankfurters barely masks the scent of Rome burning.

Either/Or

There are several school diversity cases before the Supreme Court right now, and it's too bad that Darren from Right on the Left Coast isn't still in D.C. I would love to have gotten some feedback on the chatter around the courthouse. I'm not going to go over the details of each case. Instead, I will be making blanket statements about school diversity in general.

Humans, as powerful as we have become, are still subject to certain constraints on time and space. We simply don't have enough resources or energy available to reach all of society's goals simultaneously. Many times we will be required to choose between doing one thing really well or two things mediocre. The continuing struggle for school desegregation is one of those times.

School desegregation has been a great thing. The days of governors standing at schoolhouse doors are over. Anyone of any race can attend their neighborhood schools and receive the same education as everyone else (in that particular school, of course.) But in the days of accountability, NCLB, and with myriad talk of catastrophe and crisis from both sides, maybe it's time we focus on teaching instead of stirring our melting pot.

If it were up to me, there wouldn't be diversity. I wish there was one single human culture. I don't understand people who want to preserve all of the special little idiosyncrasies that separate us and lament each time a tradition falls to globalization. As far as I can tell, it's the celebration of those historic distinctions based on arbitrary geographic and social boundaries that make it so easy for us to keep killing one another. And I've had just about enough of that, thank you very much.

But that perfectly homogenized, randomly distributed population isn't going to exist any time soon. In the meantime, based purely on scarcity of time and money, I think our nation needs to decide on a tighter focus. Let's work on educating the kids first. Of course, some schools will have an easier time of it than others. Yes, those schools will most likely be affluent suburban schools with limited people of color. Yes, that is a sad reminder of just how much farther we have to go. I believe in many Liberal ideals, but I would just as soon get all the kids to pass their basic skills tests. Then, and only then, can we try to tackle the diversity issue.

No Bong Hits for Jesus

Well it's the end of the road for Joseph Frederick, the high school student from Juneau, Alaska who was suspended in 2002 for unfurling a banner reading Bong Hits for Jesus as the Olympic flame passed by. It's unfortunate that the boundaries of our Constitutional rights are tested by idiots and assholes, but if you really think about it, it's those people who are willing to go too far who demonstrate for the rest of us exactly how far we can go.

The setback doesn't seem to have hindered Frederick too much; he's now living and teaching in China. But how much has it affected the civil liberties of the rest of America's public school children? Frederick himself admits that it was not an exercise in free expression so much as a publicity stunt, saying that

the words on his 14ft (4.26m) banner did not relate to drug use and were meant to be funny in an attempt to get on television.

I suppose he could have just as easily mooned the cameras and achieved roughly the same effect, although I have to give him props for creativity. If he had chosen this more trite route, he would have received the same suspension and moved on. Unfortunately, at least for our legal system, he is a better humorist than that. So instead the battle raged all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost his case, but it was close. 5-4. Not a solid victory either way.

Though I am a staunch civil libertarian, I have to disagree with my beloved ACLU on this one. I don't believe Frederick's right of free speech was violated. If his banner had read Impeach Bush or Make Love, Not War or even Legalize Marijuana, then it might be a different story. If the kid were actually trying to make an important statement, I would support him, whether I agreed with it or not. Instead I have to agree with my conservative pal Darren over at Right on the Left Coast. Frederick admitted that he wasn't trying to promote drug use, Christianity, or any combination of the two. He was trying to be funny. I believe he succeeded, and like every good class clown knows, sometimes you have to take the punishment for your craft.

He broke school rules at a school sponsored activity, and they were well within their rights to discipline him.

I fear the fall-out from this case will be severe. Students do have to constantly fight for their rights. They are in a unique spot. Unlike other minority groups, they can't take their fight to the election booth. They can't vote about anything. So they have to convince adults to do it for them, and that can be tough to do, especially when well publicized cases of stupidity like this get conservatives up in arms. I would never wish for anybody's rights to be violated, but it certainly wouldn't hurt the cause if a more easily defensible case came to light, and the sooner the better.

Daddy's Little Girl

Fathers, be good to your daughters. Daughters will live like you do. Girls become lovers, who turn into mothers. So mothers, be good to your daughters, too. -John Mayer

Little girls always seem to have their fathers wrapped around their little fingers. They smile their sweet little smiles and throw their tiny arms around you, and you feel like the biggest strongest man in the world. What wouldn't you do for her? You will protect her from all the world's evils. You will teach her how to drive, how to dance, and how effective a good old-fashioned knee to the groin can be. You will be there for her, celebrating every milestone- each birthday, her high school graduation, the day she goes to college, and her wedding day (although there is no man who will truly deserve her.) She will always be your little girl.

Just as girls have a tremendous power over their dads, so do men have a great responsibility for shaping the woman that little girl will become. By your words and actions, you will pass along your particular meme for gender identity. She will learn how to make herself attractive to the opposite sex by batting her eyelashes at you. Humans are highly adapted social creatures. We aren't exactly mind-readers, but we are capable of transmitting an unbelievable amount of information through non-verbal cuing. You may think you are telling her one thing, but she may be hearing something else.

"We've known for a while now that females do as well as males on tests that measure ability in math and science," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "But women are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math graduate programs and in careers based on those disciplines."

It's as if women are saying, "I can, but I don't want to," according to Davis-Kean.

Why don't they want to? Could it be because women who go against traditional gender roles, the brave few who thumb their noses at the patriarchy, becoming mathematicians or engineers, aren't exactly filling up their dance cards? Don't misunderstand. Any man who doesn't want to be with a strong, intellectual, independent woman isn't worth a damn, in my book. Any man who can't handle being with a woman who is smarter than him, or makes more money, is a small, sad, little golem. And you probably feel that way, too. I'm sure you tell her she can be anything she wants to be. You would be proud of her whether she was the prom queen or president of the math club. But actions, oh how they speak louder than words.

In a study presented recently at a campus meeting, Davis-Kean and colleagues analyzed how parents' values and attitudes affect children's math performance and later interest, and how these attitudes vary by the child's gender. They used data from a longitudinal study of more than 800 children and a large group of their parents that began in 1987 and continued through 2000.

They found that parents provided more math-supportive environments for their sons than for their daughters, including buying more math and science toys for the boys. They also spent more time on math and science activities with their sons than with their daughters.

It isn't enough to simply tell her all the things she can be; you have to make her want to be them. There are organizations galore devoted to promoting women in the sciences. The Society for Women Engineers is one I have mentioned in the past, but there are myriad others. None of them have the power to shape a young girl's image of what a woman can be more than daddy.

You're a modern man. You've left that Victorian chauvinism behind. You believe women are your equals. At least, that's what you always say. But do you really mean it? Ask your daughter what she wants to be when she grows up. You might be unpleasantly surprised.

Girl on Girl Education

After reading this article in Teacher Magazine, I've decided to revisit the idea of same sex schooling. I discussed it briefly in an earlier post about a Wisconsin school district that was experimenting with it, and had since forgotten about it. I'm not immediately opposed to it, and I certainly don't think it is sexist, like some of its detractors. For me, it's all about efficacy. If it works, let's make it available.

The very first thing I want to see is some empirical data. So far, all I am finding is anecdotal evidence, which you know I hate. Anytime you ask a person to subjectively rate an experience, especially those based on memory, you can easily cherry pick opinions for or against anything. These opinions are therefore completely useless when it comes to decision making. Even when the opinion comes from someone I hold in high esteem, like my blog-friend Rebecca, I still need to see some evidence.

This recent article provided little in the way of hard data. Actually, there were some red flags that caught my attention, like the following exchange.

Are there disadvantages or challenges to same-sex schooling?

For the book, I looked at single-sex schools that were recommended by friends and colleagues. I investigated seven new girls’ schools, (including Archer), three of them public institutions; I visited six established single-sex schools.

I can find no disadvantages for any students who attend any of these thirteen schools.

No disadvantages? From what I know of reality, seldom if ever do we find things with absolutely no negative repercussions. I decided to go in search of some more conclusive evidence, which I did find. The results of myriad studies show that girls do better in "non-traditional" classes like math and science when educated in same-sex environments. The results are not nearly as impressive for boys. Although they tend to enjoy more artistic endeavors like drama, their scores in the academic subjects do not markedly increase. I suspect this is where the systemic effects of living in a sexist society come into play. I really don't buy the whole "girls learn differently" line. I seriously doubt that the teaching methodology differs that much from co-ed to same-sex. Any positive effects are going to come from the environment. As proof of this, one study also compared class sizes and found that the positive results occurred mainly in medium size schools. Small schools weren't able to offer all of the options, regardless of gender, and in larger schools, the teacher-student ratios negated any positive effects.

So I guess my take on it is this. Does same-sex public education have benefits? Maybe. But then I suspect that similar effects could be created by segregating along ethnic lines, and I think we can all agree that that is a bad idea. Should same-sex public education be made more widely available? Fine by me. But I don't want to teach there. What I would prefer is that we find a way to teach co-ed classrooms so that girls feel equally empowered as boys. If positive results can only be achieved by eliminated distractions, then to me, those results are suspect and quite likely to disappear once the disctractions return.

Who'd Have Thunk It?

So a new list of recommendations has come out which suggests certain incentives for attracting new teachers to the fields of math a science. Topping the list is the most innovative and ground-breaking idea the think-tankers have ever thunk. According to their research, and this is completely unconfirmed data at this point, but anyway it appears as though there is a minute possibility that higher caliber educators may be attracted by higher wages.

I know, that seems ridiculous. Teachers are well-known for their hatred of the almighty dollar. The have always appeared to thrive by living in near impoverished conditions, taking what is left of their meager salaries after taxes and food, and using it to buy supplies for their classrooms. Yes, it certainly is counter-intuitive. Who would have thought that intelligent, passionate, capable people would be enticed by MORE money? It sure is a good thing that we have experts willing to look for solutions outside the box like this. Maybe there's hope for us, yet.

Science and Wizardry

When most people think of wizards these days, images of Harry Potter or Gandalf the Grey come to mind. But to me, the most important wizard in my life went by the name of Mister.

Don Herbert, TV's Mr. Wizard, passed away yesterday at 89. He is probably one of the great scientific influences on my life. When I watched his show as a kid, I learned that science was something that anyone could do. I didn't need to have expensive equipment or a fancy degree. All I needed was curiosity and a few carefully selected household items and the mysteries of the universe would fall at my feet. Later in life, I would be introduced to the likes of Newton and Hawking, but the real inspiration for my love of discovery came from Herbert.

He didn't have a terribly impressive academic background, just a degree from a teachers' college and some time spent in the Army. What he did have was a passion for his subject and the ability to pass it on to others. He was one of my favorite teachers growing up, even though he never knew it, and I will always remember him.

Throw the Book at Him

The despicable DA Mark Nifong, who pushed through the Duke lacrosse case on extremely shaky evidence, goes to court today himself. He is probably going to be disbarred for several ethics violations involving the case, but I wonder if that's enough. I understand that prosecutors need to have some protection, but in this case I think he was criminally negligent. (I'm pretty sure I've mentioned how he stacked the odds during the photo line-up by not providing only team photos without any shills.) I hope that at the very least the families of the boys get to sue him. Then if they win, which they would, they can donate all of the money to charity or something.

Tile My Plane, Oo Baby, Oh, Yes! Don't Stop!.

If there are a lot of typos in this one, it's because I'm laughing so hard there are tears in my eyes. Evidently, a 4th grade class in Scottsdale, AZ was subjected to a few seconds of hard-core porn after the closing credits of Tessellations: The Art and the Magic. It seems that the production company that was outsourced the task of making the video had a stockpile of old porn tapes hanging around and decided to recycle them, which while environmentally conscious, was a predictably risky thing to do. All ten copies of the video have been removed from the school system, but there's no telling how many other students have seen this, since the schools have been using the tape for three years. I'll bet there are a few teachers out there who are now questioning why little Johnnie checked out the tessellation movie 15 times in one month. And who can blame him, I mean, that's a Metamorphosis I'd like to see.

Take That, FCC!

Finally, someone is putting a stop to the random and capricious policies of the FCC. I knew if I just waited long enough, the First Amendment would prevail.

I'm so fucking happy.