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Critical Ruminations

"The world is but a Schoole of inquisition" Montaigne (Florio, III, 8, 928)

Monday, November 16, 2015

Solidarity!


Posted by KA at 9:45 AM No comments:

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Just say no!

Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds

http://gu.com/p/4e243

Posted by KA at 1:03 PM No comments:

... and..... The Lincoln Memorial..... grain storage!!

Ben Carson's house: an homage to himself – in pictures

http://gu.com/p/4evqq


Is there any end to the yahoos we must endure!?
Posted by KA at 12:49 PM No comments:

Monday, February 23, 2015

It’s not hard to imagine

Precisely.


==========================


The Opinion Pages| Op-Ed Columnist

Knowledge Isn’t Power

FEB. 23, 2015

By Paul Krugman, New York Times

Regular readers know that I sometimes mock “very serious people” — politicians and pundits who solemnly repeat conventional wisdom that sounds tough-minded and realistic. The trouble is that sounding serious and being serious are by no means the same thing, and some of those seemingly tough-minded positions are actually ways to dodge the truly hard issues.

The prime example of recent years was, of course, Bowles-Simpsonism — the diversion of elite discourse away from the ongoing tragedy of high unemployment and into the supposedly crucial issue of how, exactly, we will pay for social insurance programs a couple of decades from now. That particular obsession, I’m happy to say, seems to be on the wane. But my sense is that there’s a new form of issue-dodging packaged as seriousness on the rise. This time, the evasion involves trying to divert our national discourse about inequality into a discussion of alleged problems with education.

And the reason this is an evasion is that whatever serious people may want to believe, soaring inequality isn’t about education; it’s about power.

Just to be clear: I’m in favor of better education. Education is a friend of mine. And it should be available and affordable for all. But what I keep seeing is people insisting that educational failings are at the root of still-weak job creation, stagnating wages and rising inequality. This sounds serious and thoughtful. But it’s actually a view very much at odds with the evidence, not to mention a way to hide from the real, unavoidably partisan debate.

The education-centric story of our problems runs like this: We live in a period of unprecedented technological change, and too many American workers lack the skills to cope with that change. This “skills gap” is holding back growth, because businesses can’t find the workers they need. It also feeds inequality, as wages soar for workers with the right skills but stagnate or decline for the less educated. So what we need is more and better education.

My guess is that this sounds familiar — it’s what you hear from the talking heads on Sunday morning TV, in opinion articles from business leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, in “framing papers” from the Brookings Institution’s centrist Hamilton Project. It’s repeated so widely that many people probably assume it’s unquestionably true. But it isn’t.

For one thing, is the pace of technological change really that fast? “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” the venture capitalist Peter Thiel has snarked. Productivity growth, which surged briefly after 1995, seems to have slowed sharply.

Furthermore, there’s no evidence that a skills gap is holding back employment. After all, if businesses were desperate for workers with certain skills, they would presumably be offering premium wages to attract such workers. So where are these fortunate professions? You can find some examples here and there. Interestingly, some of the biggest recent wage gains are for skilled manual labor — sewing machine operators, boilermakers — as some manufacturing production moves back to America. But the notion that highly skilled workers are generally in demand is just false.

Finally, while the education/inequality story may once have seemed plausible, it hasn’t tracked reality for a long time. “The wages of the highest-skilled and highest-paid individuals have continued to increase steadily,” the Hamilton Project says. Actually, the inflation-adjusted earnings of highly educated Americans have gone nowhere since the late 1990s.

So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment. How is that possible? Well, it’s what you would expect if rising profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital.

As for wages and salaries, never mind college degrees — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.

Now, there’s a lot we could do to redress this inequality of power. We could levy higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and invest the proceeds in programs that help working families. We could raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to organize. It’s not hard to imagine a truly serious effort to make America less unequal.

But given the determination of one major party to move policy in exactly the opposite direction, advocating such an effort makes you sound partisan. Hence the desire to see the whole thing as an education problem instead. But we should recognize that popular evasion for what it is: a deeply unserious fantasy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/opinion/paul-krugman-knowledge-isnt-power.html?emc=edit_ty_20150223&nl=opinion&nlid=58610796&_r=0
Posted by KA at 11:23 AM No comments:

Monday, February 2, 2015

To be or not to be... reckless...

Still... there's a time to be 'reckless' (like the end play of 1st half - way to go Carroll!) and there's a time when not to: 1 yard from a Superbowl win...


View image on Twitter

"Upon further review, the play was closer to success than it initially appeared. Jason McIntrye of The Big Lead posted a screencap that shows Lockette was briefly open – Butler just made the play of his life in anticipating where Wilson intended to go with the ball and beating the receiver to the spot."

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/feb/02/how-bad-was-the-seahawks-play-call-at-the-end-of-super-bowl-xlix
Posted by KA at 9:36 AM No comments:

Friday, January 30, 2015

Drive-by education in ballyhoo city

And intuitively as well, the following perspective is spot on. What it should translate to - also - is renewed interest in the 'traditional' classroom, the engagement of the teacher, not diluted by technology, focusing on content, delivery, and pedagogies. Smartphones out, textbooks in.

"As extensive research shows, just one year with a gifted teacher in middle school makes it far less likely that a student will get pregnant in high school, and much more likely that she will go to college, earn a decent salary, live in a good neighborhood and save for retirement."

"Impoverished children would thus have the power to go online and educate themselves — no school or teacher required" - precisely: they love that, laptop sellers.

=======================

The Opinion Pages| Op-Ed Contributor

Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

By SUSAN PINKERJAN. 30, 2015
 

PRESIDENT OBAMA’s domestic agenda, which he announced in his State of the Union address this month, has a lot to like: health care, maternity leave, affordable college. But there was one thing he got wrong. As part of his promise to educate American children for an increasingly competitive world, he vowed to “protect a free and open Internet” and “extend its reach to every classroom and every community.”
 
More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it.
 
In the early 2000s, the Duke University economists Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd tracked the academic progress of nearly one million disadvantaged middle-school students against the dates they were given networked computers. The researchers assessed the students’ math and reading skills annually for five years, and recorded how they spent their time. The news was not good.
“Students who gain access to a home computer between the 5th and 8th grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math scores,” the economists wrote, adding that license to surf the Internet was also linked to lower grades in younger children.
 
In fact, the students’ academic scores dropped and remained depressed for as long as the researchers kept tabs on them. What’s worse, the weaker students (boys, African-Americans) were more adversely affected than the rest. When their computers arrived, their reading scores fell off a cliff.
We don’t know why this is, but we can speculate. With no adults to supervise them, many kids used their networked devices not for schoolwork, but to play games, troll social media and download entertainment. (And why not? Given their druthers, most adults would do the same.)
 
The problem is the differential impact on children from poor families. Babies born to low-income parents spend at least 40 percent of their waking hours in front of a screen — more than twice the time spent by middle-class babies. They also get far less cuddling and bantering over family meals than do more privileged children. The give-and-take of these interactions is what predicts robust vocabularies and school success. Apps and videos don’t.
 
If children who spend more time with electronic devices are also more likely to be out of sync with their peers’ behavior and learning by the fourth grade, why would adding more viewing and clicking to their school days be considered a good idea?
 
An unquestioned belief in the power of gadgetry has already led to educational snafus. Beginning in 2006, the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project envisioned a digital utopia in which all students over 6 years old, worldwide, would own their own laptops. Impoverished children would thus have the power to go online and educate themselves — no school or teacher required. With laptops for poor children initially priced at $400, donations poured in. But the program didn’t live up to the ballyhoo. For one thing, the machines were buggy and often broke down. And when they did work, the impoverished students who received free laptops spent more time on games and chat rooms and less time on their homework than before, according to the education researchers Mark Warschauer and Morgan Ames. It’s drive-by education — adults distribute the laptops and then walk away.
 
It’s true that there is often an initial uptick in students’ engagement with their studies — interactive apps can be fun. But the novelty wears off after a few months, said Larry Cuban, an emeritus education professor at Stanford.
 
Technology does have a role in education. But as Randy Yerrick, a professor of education at the University at Buffalo, told me, it is worth the investment only when it’s perfectly suited to the task, in science simulations, for example, or to teach students with learning disabilities.
 
And, of course, technology can work only when it is deployed as a tool by a terrific, highly trained teacher. As extensive research shows, just one year with a gifted teacher in middle school makes it far less likely that a student will get pregnant in high school, and much more likely that she will go to college, earn a decent salary, live in a good neighborhood and save for retirement. To the extent that such a teacher can benefit from classroom technology, he or she should get it. But only when such teachers are effectively trained to apply a specific application to teaching a particular topic to a particular set of students — only then does classroom technology really work.
 
Even then, we still have no proof that the newly acquired, tech-centric skills that students learn in the classroom transfer to novel problems that they need to solve in other areas. While we’re waiting to find out, the public money spent on wiring up classrooms should be matched by training and mentorship programs for teachers, so that a free and open Internet, reached through constantly evolving, beautifully packaged and compelling electronic tools, helps — not hampers — the progress of children who need help the most.

______________________________________
Susan Pinker, a developmental psychologist and columnist, is the author, most recently, of “The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter.”

Posted by KA at 10:12 AM No comments:

Friday, January 16, 2015

The Lone Voice

Stay out of Michigan... the only problem with that statement, of course, is: in America - where do you go for some sense on this issue?

"...a harbinger of more N.R.A. defeats..." - how sweet does that not sound?

"...a bargaining chip to a road funding bill... - is this really worthy politics to let death and destruction hinge on road funding? Good grief, Americans!

======================


The Opinion Pages| Editorial http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/opinion/standing-up-to-the-nra.html

Standing Up to the N.R.A.


Governor of Michigan Vetoes Bill on GunsJAN. 15, 2015
Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan rebuffed heavy lobbying by the National Rifle Association and vetoed a patently dangerous gun measure Thursday that would have compounded the risks for women caught in domestic abuse cases. The measure, quietly passed by the Republican Legislature at the behest of the gun lobby, would have allowed gun permits for abusers in domestic violence and stalking cases — even those under a court-issued restraining order — if judges neglected to issue an explicit ban.
 
Under current law, denial of a gun license is automatic for abusers in domestic violence and stalking cases. Mr. Snyder, a Republican, firmly upheld that law with his veto, forthrightly declaring, “We simply can’t and won’t take the chance of exposing domestic abuse victims to additional violence or intimidation.”

With his veto, which gun safety proponents must hope is a harbinger of more N.R.A. defeats, the governor stood as the rare Republican leader willing to buck the powerful gun lobby’s statehouse clout and political threats. Mr. Snyder had been heavily petitioned by both the gun lobby and leaders of gun safety groups, who have been increasingly focused on statehouses as potentially more responsive than Congress to act against gun violence, which claims tens of thousands of lives each year.
 
Mr. Snyder focused on explosive family situations in explaining his veto. “It’s crucial that we leave in place protections for people who already have endured challenges and abuse,” Mr. Snyder said.
Women living with a gun in the home are more than twice as likely to be murdered than those with no gun on the premises, according to a study in the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine. Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered by guns than women in other high-income countries, according to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that worked against the measure in Lansing.
 
The gun proposal was attached as a bargaining chip to a road funding bill last month in the closing midnight hours of the legislative session. “You can make a mountain out of a molehill,” Senator Mike Green, the measure’s Republican sponsor, callously commented when asked by The Detroit Free Press if domestic abuse victims should be alarmed. They certainly should be in a state where the number of concealed-weapon permits has leapt from 100,000 in 2001 to nearly 600,000 last year.
 
Posted by KA at 10:49 AM No comments:

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Je suis Charlie!

The finest hour of Western liberal democracies: it is not a right not to be ridiculed!

Charlie Hebdo: cartoon satire is a more potent weapon than hate. Humour is an essential force in the defence of free speech

http://gu.com/p/44ydh


Salman Rushdie:

"Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect."

http://www.englishpen.org/campaigns/salman-rushdie-condemns-attack-on-charlie-hebdo/

Posted by KA at 12:35 PM No comments:

Monday, January 5, 2015

Happy New Year everybody!


Posted by KA at 11:29 AM No comments:
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Udsigt gennem tre buer i Colosseums tredje stokværk (c. 1816) View Through Three Arches

Udsigt gennem tre buer i Colosseums tredje stokværk (c. 1816) View Through Three Arches
C. W Eckersberg (2 January 1783 – 22 July 1853)

Interpretation

I find this Danish golden-age painting by Eckersberg a good visual metaphor for interpreting literature: classical Rome stretches out beyond the arches and thunder is brewing in the sky. We should probably count ourselves fortunate did we possess or command just three modes of understanding as we engage a literary text.

Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne
Wearing a ruff.

Ruffs and fardingales?

"Must we throw aside the pictures of our ancestors because of their ruffs and fardingales?"
Great question by Hume: Of the Standards of Taste (in Art and Its Significance, ed. Stephen David Ross, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994, p. 90)

A ruff and a fardingale were 16th century dress fashions, long since gone out of fashion.

Just to disclaim

Now, should anyone by error, chance, or whatever, happen to come by this blog - which I absolutely do not expect - as a matter of fact I sort of talk to myself on these pages - I just want to make absolutely sure that the basic disclaimer to be found at the bottom of my index-webpage, also goes for these blogs or anything that you might find, dear non-existent reader, on any of those pages associated with my webpage or blogs or however you might have ended up here: Not Washington State University, nor the WSU Honors College, or any person associated with said institutions carry any sort of responsibility - nor do the United States of America, the Kingdom of Denmark, nor the EU - for the utterings on these blog-etc.-pages, the opinions and juxtapositions expressed there all being solely mine, simply for the sake of having and expressing opinions, no matter how potentially erroneous or ill-conceived they might turn out to be.

Thank you! Now please read on...
KA

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