Wack is Back!

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Is cutting edge science too much for high school students to understand?

No! In general students need to have a good overview of the current ‘cutting edge’ issues in science. Without such an overview they will not be able to wise decisions about career choices in science. If science is presented as if all the important and exciting work has already been done few students will chose a career in science and America will continue fall behind other nations in the production of young scientists. The view of science as a static cut and dried body of knowledge is simply false and misleading. Even those who do not chose a science or technology career need to be aware of what the cutting edge issues are about because otherwise the will not be able to participate a good citizens in our nation’s development of legal, ethical, and moral choices of our modern society. When presented with a challenge students often rise to the task but without a challenge students commonly settle for mediocrity. Our students should not be undersold or repressed.

Texans for Better Science Education Foundation, FAQ

Since John McCain has been the Republican choice it”s been relatively quiet on the wacky Christian front, with the exception of Mr.“God is Punishing New Orleans.” Appearances can be deceiving. In fact, as the New York Times reports, they’ve been busily re-tooling themselves as a kind of “fair and balanced” movement.

The Texans for Better Science Education Foundation’s language is so freakishly Orwellian that you’d think they modeled themselves on 1984.They claim that “new discoveries” cast doubt on evolution. That means it’s mainstream scientists who are holding us all back because they can’t deal with change.

The ideas are absurd but the rhetoric seems to work and the TBSEF has managed to get their ideas on the agenda of the Texas Sate Education board. If the creationists get their ideas into Texas textbooks, of course, they get them spread all over the country, since publishers are not going to create special editions for each state.

Posted in: Language, Professional, Writing

The Rise of the Machines

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Just as, today, we have no living memories of a time before the existence of radio, we will soon live in a world in which no one living experienced growing up in a society without computers. It is for this reason that we must try to examine what we stand to lose and gain, before it is too late. Susan Greenfield and others are right that there is no necessary correlation between technological and moral progress, and that unintended consequences have proliferated from all those leaps humanity has made over the last hundred and even thousands of years. In the past, such losses have barely registered in our daily lives, because those who could tell us about them were long dead. But today, with epochal change taking place on the scale of generations, our past and our future are almost simultaneous—and the joyful, absorbing complexity that games can deliver is also their greatest threat.

Within the virtual worlds we have begun to construct, players can experience the kind of deep, lasting satisfactions that only come from the performance of a complex, sociable and challenging task. Yet such satisfactions will always remain, in a crucial sense, unreal. Whatever skills it teaches and friendships it creates, an eight-hour World of Warcraft session is nevertheless solipsistic like few other activities. Is a descent into precision-engineered narcissism on the cards? I believe not: the ways we are already making and playing games show that to be human is to demand more than this. But the doomsayers are right in one important respect. If we do not learn to balance the new worlds we are building with our living culture, we may lose something of ourselves.

Tom Chatfield, The New Prospect, June 2008

It’s Friday and I think this is the latest I’ve posted since I started this blog almost two years ago so I won’t add much to this quote. Chatfield’s piece is thoughtful and worth reading, even in the end his main point is that people are people and technology won’t change that anytime soon.

Each new media or genre at least since the novel has been met with the same dire warnings about certain doom. Each has been wrong, too, unless you want to blame media for the non-stop violence of the last hundred years or so. Maybe we can link Grand Theft Auto to global warming.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Miscellaneous, Writing

Think Again RPCVs: Robert L. Strauss

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Sargent Shriver, the agency’s first director, recognized that a “Peace Corps, small and symbolic, might be good public relations, but a Peace Corps that was large and had a major impact on problems in other countries could transform the economic development of the world,” according to former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford. Because the Peace Corps has tried to be all things to all comers, that grand vision has never been realized or even approached. To become effective and relevant, the Peace Corps must now give up on the myth that its creation was the result of an immaculate conception that can never be questioned or altered. It must go out and recruit the best of the best. It must avoid goodwill-generating window dressing and concentrate its resources in a limited number of countries that are truly interested in the development of their people. And it must give up on the risible excuse that in the absence of quantifiable results, good intentions are enough. Only then will it be able to achieve its original objective of significantly altering the lives of millions for the better.

Think Again: The Peace Corps, Robert L. Strauss, in Foreign Policy, April 2008

I have to say that, even though I am a “Returned Peace Corps Volunteer” (RPCV) myself, I don’t like what I have seen of RPCV culture, here or abroad. It’s too often self-congratulatory, if not self-righteous.

On the other hand, I haven’t sought out other RPCVs, and when I am contacted by the Peace Corps it is usually in the context of promoting the program or celebrating our service. None of these situations are conductive to critical self-reflection.

The people I knew in the Peace Corps would welcome some sort of critical discussion. Strauss makes a great start although he leans towards hyperbole. Still, I can’t help but agree that the Peace Corps has not achieved is original mission and could use an overhaul.

I think this new, revised Peace Corps ought to be coupled closely with it’s domestic parallels, such as AmericaCorps, and linked to a wide-spread initiative to expand higher education and to make college fully accessible.

An ideal program would include several components. It would have to begin, as Strauss says, with specific countries making specific requests. My sense is that much if not all of this sort of development would require a little expertise, and a lot of labor.

In any case, the basic bargain would be a trade of overseas development work for college expenses. I think this might best be done as a year long program either before or after college. It might also be possible to have a program that allows you to do two-months at a time, starting in High School.

I think this sort of program would come much closer to the original ideals of the Peace Corps. If well run and designed, it could accelerate development all over the world. Just as importantly, it would help to create a less insular culture here, which might help the world more than anything else.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing

DefectiveByDesign.org

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DefectiveByDesign.org is a broad-based anti-DRM campaign that is targeting Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors. The campaign aims to make all manufacturers wary about bringing their DRM-enabled products to market. DRM products have features built-in that restrict what jobs they can do. These products have been intentionally crippled from the users’ perspective, and are therefore “defective by design”. This campaign will identify these “defective” products, and target them for elimination. We aim to make DRM an anti-social technology. We aim for the abolition of DRM as a social practice.

About DefectiveByDesign.org

I like this idea of identifying attempts to technologically corral new forms of property ‘defective by design.’ It’s both rhetorically savvy and true. It’s not just music where this ought to apply, though, it’s also knowledge of all kinds.

There’s a fight brewing over creative writing students who do not want their work available online. “I don’t necessarily want people to go back and read my thesis,” says Jeanne M. Leiby, an associate professor of English at Louisiana State University, in a Chronicle of Higher Education story.

Others report that the problem is just the opposite, that a freely available thesis cannot be published. Something tells me that the implicit end of that sentence is “for profit.” I sympathize with the embarrassment, though; with a little work you can read my thesis on Paul de Man from 20 years ago.

I think some of this pressure is coming from ill-paid professors hoping to make it big with their novel or screenplay. It’s a sign of the times, though, that the public missions of universities is ignored in favor of a so-called ‘right’ to self-aggrandizement. There’s more than a little vanity in that notion, too.

I have to agree with West Virginia’s electronic thesis director, quoted in the same story: “All theses and dissertations should become open access,” says Mr. Hagen. “It’s important in terms of being able to trace the cultural and historical aspects of academia.” He won’t say it but I will: it’s public property.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Online Places, Professional, Writing