Forbidden Smarts

Once more into mundane – week in. Off to gym this morning, crisp, cool but not quite cold, and the gym was moderately populated, sadly with educationalist speed bumps of raucous and intrusive aspect. The podcast was an episode of the CBC’s “Best of Ideas”, the second in a series on imagination and hideously abrasive, nothing but superstition and literature and psychobabble. The only useful thing extracted was some comment about memory being part of imagination, which at least explains why we humans are such horrible rememberers.

On which azimuth, I ran across an article [Link] in the Tuscaloosa News about items verboten at football games that began with this paragraph:

” University of Alabama officials are reminding Crimson Tide fans who are planning to attend A-Day activities on Saturday that certain items cannot be brought into the stadium, including: A purse or tote bag bigger than an 8½-inch by 11-inch sheet of paper, outside food or drink, coolers, umbrellas, artificial noisemakers nor flags or banners on poles. “

I had to muse upon the first item “A purse or tote bag bigger than an 8½-inch by 11-inch sheet of paper”. Since most purses and tote bags, at least the ones that FD SCP uses, are three dimensional, one wonders how any such can fail to be rejected since they all have a thickness greater than a seet of paper, even 100 Lb card stock. Since outright rejection of such devices would be gender specific one wonders how this can be applied without litigation over discrimination?

One has to wonder if the person who wrote this actually had an education. Why the switch to ‘nor’? Does that mean such items are permitted since it seems to counteract the ‘cannot’. I should also worry about the umbrella bit because if a rain occurs and someone contracts pneumonia is the U then liable for treatment?

My general assessment is that the U has certainly dumbed down since I matriculated, if such is possible.

And while we’re on that azimuth, I need mention another article [Link] entitled “Who’s Winning, iOS or Android? All the Numbers, All in One Place.” The problem, of course, is that the numbers contradict each other and are less than useful. What does seem to come out, at least sketchily amidst the kitsch journalism, is that the Apple slavery addiction is stronger in the Yankee republic than elsewhere. I’m not sure that is good news. Maybe we can get Apple declared a religion? But then all the other sects would have to bring out their own hardware. How about a Baptist tablet that blocks all ethanol advertisements but not porn?

humans, academia, corporations, stupidity

Against Stupidity

Saturn’s day and the early summer has been bashed with a frost. Huzzah. But it is also time to begin ‘hawg’in tabs and so I may as well assay that.

First, courtesy of Michigan State U, [Link] p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } I find official (academic) confirmation that the science teachers in our public shules are incompetent. This is not news but it is, as said, official confirmation. Courtesy of Every Child Left Behind and teach-to-the-test, science has effectively been dropped from the curriculum in public shules in Amerika. Add to that the increasing number of states that mandate the teaching of superstition, mysticism, and outright inaccuracy as science. But more critically, people with education degrees are not competently knowledgeable to teach science, especially in high shule. And teacher workshops are not going to fix that.

 

Next, while we’re on malfeasance around science, I run across an article [Link] about a corporation that has set itself up to sell names of astronomical entities in defiance – blatant and illegal – of the IAU. And the horrible thing is that here in CORPORATE AMERIKA they will likely get away with it instead of getting the firing party they deserve.

And speaking of science that won’t get taught in whack job states that mandate mysticism and superstition instruction, I see [Link] indications that the development of the hand axe 1.7 MYA generated evolutionary selection that led to the hand and wrists of modern humans. I shan’t comment about the effect hand axes would have in improving science education if used properly.

In a related matter, [Link] boffins have determined that Australopithecus Sediba was pigeon toed and could not run. This rather reminds me of some overweight girls I knew in UG shule. They all belonged to the same sorority which evidently specialized in chubby girls. They did however, have much more attractive skeletons than Australopithecus Sediba.

FD SCP is off playing mother/grandmother so I am lacking adult supervision again this morning. Since it is Saturn’s day that means I get to play with the clothes washing appliances. Not as much fun as the plasma cannon but good sources of imagination if one stares through the windows long enough.

science, academia, teachers, humans, stupidity

Irrelevant College

Misbegotten day. The weather beavers say hot, at least for this time of year, today and that has already depressed me. And while there were few educationalists about at gym, there were rather a lot of speed bump neuronegs and a rather unmemorable array of science podcast episodes.

So it was in a fitting mood for me to notice an article [Link] about some work out of U Aberdeen and U Strathclyde entitled “Hold on! Degrees for all doesn’t mean great jobs for all, say profs.” My first impression was underwhelming, and then I realized that until the academics have published on something it does not “officially” exist however much it may be known by the rest of the species.

I rather doubt that is the situation here. Although I have commented on this matter several times, the number of neuronegs entering college expecting a “royal road” to career is still on the increase. Although there is some indication that the knowledge of the idiocy has begun to percolate amidst at least some. Part of the problem here is that the folks intelligent enough to figure out that a college degree is not a life pass to health, wealth, and happiness are the very folks who are most able to profit from a degree. So the realization has to seep down to the slime mold level.

Part of the problem is that what people choose to study in college does not seem to correlate well with density of jobs or how well jobs are paid. So there are still folks who study journalism and arts and ethnic studies and the like. And for some reason their parents permit this, not that this is surprising because when I went through college I largely ignored what my parents wanted me to study. Thankfully. If I had studied what my parents wanted I should be a dismal failure and likely discorporate now. So I am rather a believer in independence in this matter.

But I am also an advocate of smarts and there are still an amazing number of college students who lack such. Which is probably why there are still programs in these trash disciplines.

But the fact also remains that the number of jobs that require a college degree are limited, and the people who fill those jobs tend to like them and stay in them. And there are jobs whose applicants are required to have a degree but never need it. And finally there are jobs that don’t want people with a college degree because they know too much and don’t work the way management wants. And right now there seems to be lots of people for the first two types and too few for the third.

As I keep saying, once the majority have college degrees, a college degree is not a career distinction. IOW, a degree ceases to help. It may still be necessary, but its value has decreased. And that is a fundamental problem that we are ignoring. The cost of college is increasing and its value is decreasing. And we can’t seem to figure that out.

humans, education, academia, degree, useless

Education Rant

At the boundary of week in and facing yet another period of discomfort and distress. Being a senior is not fun, especially the physical and mental degradations. One of the things I am trying to break is feeling individual responsibility for the collective stupidity of the species. After all, the majority of the species are extrovert bogs so on either a democratic or totalitarian basis, why should a introvert nerd feel other than excluded?

Some of my neuronorm colleagues wring their hands for not doing more but to do more – effectively – requires some form of cooperation of society that I have been unable to find.

I have commented on the increasing incompetence of the educational instrumentality. More than half of the high shule graduates who enter college, which is the majority, must take remedial  coursework. I can find no stronger indictment that pre-college education is a failure already, probably in large part because of Every Child Left Behind.My boggish colleagues ask when I am going to quit just criticizing and offer a solution, but solutions are hard, especially those that involve people.

The latest impulse of public shule demands for increased funding did rile me enough that I was able to formulate a strategy of solution, if not solution itself. Money, based on over twenty years of observation, will not fix the problems with the public shules. But I have an inkling of what will fix them, and reduce actual costs, and that is to start abolishing rules on both teachers and students. The starting point is, of course, to abolish standardized tests, including the college admission tests that existed when I was a student. Next, we need to abolish all rules on behavior that does not result in physical or mental harm that requires attendance by a medical practitioner.

No more expelling students for saying “bang, bang” or pantomiming a pistol. No more expelling students for objectionable clothing. But definitely expulsion for chronic bullying. Or exile to Coventry. Or better, electroshock therapy.

I got this idea from an epiphany:

“Formalization eliminates both good and bad and replaces them with boring mundanity.”

Rules, as Plato would tell us at the Academy, are the enemy of education.

The higher education establishments are not excluded. They are increasingly unsustainable and failing. All those students entering, who cannot perform to standard, and in great numbers, are forcing the dilution of all curricula. In effect, our colleges are turning themselves into high shules.

I’ll B&M about the collapse of the graduate education system at a later time. [Link]

academia, education, failure, solution, tyranny

Every Child a Boob

Once more into the breach, or, in this case, the week out. And not a bright outlook. In fact a bit dismal out this morning after a night of rain. I am also in the mode of clearing tabs and I find most of them this morning to be dull and uncommentable.

I have however, been cogitating the nature of freedom, something we have rather little of these days. And the politicians seem Hell-bent on reducing that, regardless of their party. But the mode I was thinking in goes back to he comments yesterday about the emerging requirement of a college diploma – I am unsure this means one has satisfied the REAL requirements for a degree any more – for any sort of job.

There will, of course, always be jobs that college graduates will not seek except in the direst of circumstances. Those that do not pay a living wage, much less enough to retire the now coupled college debt, and those that are abhorrent. I rather doubt that we shall see many wetback graduates toiling in the fields of vegetables and fruit. In many cases these jobs are scorned by Amerikan non-graduates of even high shule because of the labor required. So we have become an affluent society of aversion.

But there are several things troubling about such a trend. If nothing else it will further alienate the necessary but menial jobs. This may have the minor benefit of raising their wage levels but only at the price of reduced numbers of positions. If anything it will advance the proliferation of automation with its detriment to society. It seems also likely to further the degradation of academia.

It is exceedingly rare, in my experience, for any position to require less educational and knowledge credential than the work requires. Jobs that require a baccalaurate can usually be performed by an “associate”. This follows from the absence of freedom in almost all positions, a constraint that leads to great waste and dissatisfaction.

But it is in the nature of education that it is highly individual. The best criterion is that one has learned how to think in a constructive, creative, positive fashion. What data was accumulated along the way is less important than the skill. Sadly, this is hard to assess and the old way of a committee review for a degree has proved long ago too expensive even in the graduate environment. Hence we come to the other side of the abyss, that educational institutions are uniform, in several of the horrific meanings of that word. In my day it was largely a matter of courses that could be assembled with some freedom to meet the uniform requirement for a degree sans examination. Today that freedom has disappeared and the nature of courses has become so uniform that who teaches a course is of only minor importance, hence the demise of tenure.

This may be expected to intensify as the requirement for employment further become only a demand for a certificate and not demonstrated cognition. After writing all week about ways the species ends, this seems likely the most horrific, to reduce our intelligence to facade.

humans, education, academia, business, stupidity, extinction

Bog Coal

Real rain this morning, not the cold, icy stuff, and holy day being over – thankfully – the educationalists were back in gym obstructing things. The good (only?) thing I can say about them is that they do make for challenging study. At least of their behavior. My current hypothesis is that they’re a special class of bog molded by their environment.

Speaking of holy day, why is it that we have to merge the birthday anniversary observances of old prosthetic teeth – POTUS # 1 – and old facial mole – POTUS # 16 – but we have all these trash holy days that are untouchable? I should rather observe their birthday anniversaries than that of some philandering minister or labor union thug. But that’s probably why I am a real human and not a politician.

Today was science podcast day and there was scant science in the podcasts. Much to do about the meteors of last week but the ultimate depth was an interview at the Guardian with that nincompoop Jared Diamond. [Link] Lump of bog coal is more like it.

I have expressed my disquietude with Diamond previously. I should like to amend that now. As a biomedical researcher he seems to be quite competent. The problem is that he doesn’t write books about biomedicine; he writes books about anthropology stuff and seems to be bent on demonstrating that anthropology is neither a science nor an art.

My biggest problem with Diamond is analysis. He doesn’t do very much and what he does do is either superficial and obvious or rather egregiously bad. He is a fairly good writer if one can reduce one’s mind to an IQ of about 50 so that one can ignore all the missing bits that should have been discussed. I can excuse the absence of analysis on the simple basis that he has no capacity for such. A comment on maths in todays interview demonstrated that resoundingly. The man has to be a biologist to understand statistics and probability so poorly. But I would have hoped he would have the moral fiber to refrain from writing such intellectual kitsch.

I will give him credit that he did a better job than usual – for him – discussing violence in societies. But this also demonstrated his blindness to analysis. A simple billiard ball gas model would go far to explain much of the violence that he discussed in the finest contemporary anthropological fashion – devoid of theory or generalization, specific datums only.

This absence, of course, ties in with the probability and stats thing. Violence in society can be seen simply in the context of mean time between interpersonal encounters, probability an encounter causes anger, and probability anger causes violence. The demonstration is left for the maths competent student to shew.

I wish I could say something better about the man. It would make the world a much better place for being found.

humans, behavior, academia, nonsense

Rot and Rubbish

Once again to the back edge of week out and happily the weather beavers are in retreat. As I write my back porch is a comfortable 3 degF above the liquid -> solid dihydrogen oxide temperature, and I do not have to dread robing and venturing out to distribute seed for the dinosaur descendants and the tree mammals. So I may approach the task of tab pruning with a more positive attitude than hunkering down in my chair shivering from reduced heat content.

Speaking of content, I ran across an article [Link] on modeling the other day with an appealing statement:

“Current engineering practices create computer models that are numerical in nature to explore different design concepts and evaluate their performance. However, a more natural way to model a system is to use mathematics.”

As one who started his career in the pablum-hood of computational physics I rather made my place by advancing, and practicing, the idea that we do not bash the maths as much as possible and then go to the computer, which was the practice in the physics community in those days, but we bash it to a point where the transition to the computer is optimized to produce useful result.

Nowadays, the pendulum is on the other side of the pivot point. Modern practitioners labor under the perverse delusion that the simulation is the model, and do essentially no maths. Indeed, most of the younger ones are effectively acalculate – maths illiterate – beyond the most trivial of numerical methods, effectively the things in the first section of each chapter of my first undergraduate numerical maths text. And it had an odor even then.

No, I am not being a luddite and advocating a return to the days of electric (as opposed to electronic) calculators or slide rules and hand plotting, but I am bemoaning that too much of what is done today in the way of modeling for simulation is rubbish and rot. Actually, the article is not saying this either. Evidently even real maths folks, the few surviving, do not envision abandoning the digital computer. Rather, what is advanced is the idea of returning to the practice of enlightened tool use, of doing the right amount of maths before one starts to write code.

I doubt it will happen. Moaning and wringing hands does not change society unless it is augmented with some force of change. And enlightened attitude is not such a force.

Speaking of change, I note that my undergraduate alma mater is renovating ten Hoor hall. [Link] This information gave rise to some memory cogitation. Back in my day on the campus of the Black Warrior, ten Hoor was referred to as “tin whore”; it was the first new building I encountered, opening, I believe, in 1967. And, as might be expected from the nickname, it was widely disliked. The building, contrasting with the older styles of stone or brick with wood floors, was cinder block and linoleum. The din was horrendous at class change times. It reeked of public shule apathy. I had several courses in the building, notably anthropology/archaeology and philosophy and had to work hard to overcome the depression of the negative atmosphere. Simply, the building was not comfortable like the old building with exposed pipes under the celilings and squeaky board floors or the stinks and stains of long use. Comer, then the seat of maths, and Lloyd, the seat of chemistry then, and Galilee – physics – were especially comfortable. I hold to this day that this comfort was how I picked majors.

Now the tin whore is old enough to need renewal and the administration has wisely found temporary quarters that are even more horrible. Admirable. If you want a rat to be happy with a bad cage put them in worse for a while.

On the subject of bad cages, I note that Disney has hired the director of the Star Trek remake, an abysmal failure of GUI over grits, to make the next Star Wars movie. [Link] At least we know he cannot make it worse than it already is.

So now that I have been roundly offensive, selah.

humans, stupidity, organizations, academia, entertainment

Punishment of the Righteous

I ran across this cartoon [Link]

this morning and it struck a lot of resonances.

Despite the blatant extrovertist aspect, it reminds me of my own shule days, at least prior to college when I got to exercise a bit more control over content.

It may be argued that the children are a great deal more practical and realistic than the adult educationalist. Except I’m not at all sure what a “cootie-catcher” is. But the hat bit is definitely more useful and satisfying than an origami duck. Which does not look like a duck, or even a coot. After all, a paper hat can be of service when one has to endure weather, such as rain or snow or even low temperature and want to retain body heat. After all, the brain uses about 60 watts and that heat can get lost fast through the skull.

It may also be argued that origami is an art form. I fear I take the attitude that something is an art form only if (a) it gives me some form of mental satisfaction, and (b) I choose to learn it. The extent of my origami learning is folding paper airplanes. At one time I could fold a hat but once my head got too big for a standard sheet of paper I ceased and lost – effectively – the skill. Neither is an art form IMHO, any more than mopping floors or metabolizing. Although emptying one’s bladder after a long drive may be, at least in terms of intense mental satisfaction.

This was the paradigm of shule in my day. Almost all of what was covered there was slow, vapid, and uninteresting. I learned a lot more after schule and on weekends reading on my own. It is very hard to get much out of a class when you have read the whole textbook in the first week but still have to pay a reasonable amount of attention to avoid harassment by the educationalists, who are usually very insecure and unable to cope with intelligence or rationality. Hence the punishment of the righteous. And paper cuts would inevitably result from all the worthless paperwork that had to be done. Of course only the intelligent were punished for not doing meaningless busy work. Extroverts who didn’t do it were excused because they were real people. Or football players. Or some such.

Occasionally I have a reverie of being young and imprisoned in a contemporary shule where they only teach the test. I fear I should be a suicide datum.

academia, education, America, tyranny, stupidity

E,I,E,I Oh!

Into week out and things are already dreary. Not weather-wise, that was yesterday. And while we got missed by the ice-rain we didn’t get missed by the water-rain. But the dreary is more a matter of absence than presence. Simply put, the vacuum can be less than entertaining.

On which azimuth, I note some work at U Minnesota on the decision making processes of extroverts and introverts. Unfortunately, the extrovertist predominance managed to omit any results on introverts in the article.[Link] This was one of those psychological studies that has to do with metrics that often escape reason. In this case it had to do with the choice between an immediate and a deferred “reward”. According to the journalism, extroverts prefer immediate rewards. We have to wonder if the opposite is the situation with introverts. But that information got lost?

I have to also wonder if the experiments were poorly posed. Many things that are rewards for extroverts are punishments for introverts, like celebrations or parties. Money also has a different meaning for introverts than for extroverts. Again the privacy versus party thing.

On what may be a more humorous note, a psychology study in Sweden of students of different disciplines found that [Link]

“engineering students cared nothing for other human beings’ feelings and had few of their own.”

The journalism is less clear here. Its language is rather tongue-in-cheek, referring to the study being performed by a trick cyclist using a well-established questionaire. More pertinently, one has to wonder if this is any more than a humor article. After all, it is well documented – at least as well as the questionaire? – that STEMS tend to be introverts and are rather intense in their studies. Introverts express emotion differently than extroverts so the questionnaire may be mis-posed? But we still have this wonder that the whole thing is some sort of hoax? Perhaps perpetuated by some extrovertist organization such as a fraternity? Do the Swedes have fraternities?

Anyway, once more we have indication that introverts are different from extroverts and are persecuted by them.

humans, behavior, introverts, academia

Dartmouth Dares!

The weather beavers are arguing over whether we are going to see ice rain this morning here in Nawth Alibam. Intriguingly, the arguments all revolve around which weather simulation is used. I got to hear the lord high front tooth of one of the local television stations, WAFF, last night express his preference for one particular simulation that he asserted was “the most accurate for” his area of broadcast, which is basically a one hundred kilometer radius circle around Huntsville. He did have the goodness to talk about the existence of other simulations giving different output but nary a word of validation information. Evidently the only public accountability of weather beavers is still mob violence?

I did not have to go to gym today. It’s a rest day. which I needed after doing medicalist things yesterday as well as the usual chores. So in trying to ward off the upcoming week out and all of its petty terrors, I cast my mind to contemplation of other matters, including my opened tabs. First, I note an article [Link] in the campus newspaper of U Minnesota about how Dartmouth C is ceasing to give college credit for high shule Advanced Placement courses.

Ain’t surprised. I have talked to students who have taken AP (as they are commonly known) courses, gotten placed, if you will, in sophomore courses, and then been found wanting. Very wanting. Upon investigation I find that the process is broken more than the students. Seems that originally when AP courses were introduced – after my time – they were taught by college instructors and usually on college campus. Over time however, they first moved into the high shule building and then were taught by supposedly qualified high shule teachers. Scant wonder that the material has not been learned; it probably wasn’t even taught. And the atmosphere of college was totally absent. What is it about high shule educationalists that they cause cancer in everything they touch? Perhaps it could be that they are educated (?) in teaching but not in the disciplines they teach. Enough. I’ve covered this before.

But what I find amusing and a bit appalling is the attitude of the U Minnesota student reporter. The evil of this tale is not that students are getting cheated by their high shules, but that they are being cheated of college costs by Dartmouth by making these students start at step zero. This is a wonderful demonstration of how modern students (and their parents?) have reduced a college education to a certificate and a bill. Knowledge is now irrelevant. Only money has importance.

Perhaps we should adopt the English practice of shule ties, or some other more gender spanning piece of apparel, as the device of “educational” attainment and just sell these to students. Don’t have to attend class, don’t have to learn anything, just pay an exorbitant price for some tawdry garment and wear it to proclaim one’s elevated state? Then we can get rid of all those worthless faculty and hideously costly buildings and such.

I fear I am unmoved by the whole AP thing. It is weak soup. In fact, it isn’t even flavored water. It is typically bureaucratic in simplifying something good but complicated into something bad but bureaucratically simple, which is the organizational criterion of goodness. Organization may be what made us successful as humans but it seems likely to also assure our extinction.

academia, education, stupidity, rot, extinction