Stephan Fassmann

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009

2009-11-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009: "At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored one state reform that has proven to work, as well as the education thinker whose ideas inspired it. The state is Massachusetts, and the education thinker is E. D. Hirsch, Jr."

I love to see ideas in conflict and what each side brings to bare.

Rural towns need to reinvent themselves

2009-10-30T16:58:00.000-06:00

Doughnut-Hole Country | Print Article | Newsweek.com: "But there are people maybe with young families or who tried urban living and wanted to opt out and try something else, who could be lured to the region—maybe not every 22-year-old, but maybe a 32-year-old who would think, 'This is great. I can raise my kids, I can buy a gigantic house. And as long as I have the digital infrastructure, I can telecommute. I can have a very good quality of life.' I think the lifestyle rural communities have to offer is really more compatible for young families."

I don't think much of cities, they were and still are a place to get people together so they are easier to control. Until very recently cities were the only way to get enough people together to divide up the labor so you could do something big. Like build millions of cars or manage billions of dollars. When our cities were build the only only way to talk to someone was to walk or hop on a horse and ride to meet them in person or send a letter that took the same methods.

How many different ways can we get in contact with someone now?

It is interesting to see how important diversions are in this conversation. That is a question up there with "What about their socialization?" it misses the point. Look at NetFlix or iTunes they don't care where you live, all you need is mail or broadband. How many of those users are in cities already not taking advantage of those oh, so important amenities they claim are so important because they aren't in the rural.

Going out to the movies is a lot of fun, but in a rural town it is hard to do if the only theater is playing the same movie for weeks. Okay, so this is an issue that Hollywood has to get over itself to solve, but a small rural theater wouldn't be bad at all if there was a way to dial up the movie you want instead of waiting until the reels you have have "paid" for themselves. The technology is out there but it is stuck in oldthink.

Admittedly, sometimes you want to actually be with other people of similar interests. How many forms of MeetUp.com do you need? Just one for the town, really. Then you just have to be open and honest enough about yourself to post what you really want to do, rather then what you want them to expect you to want to do.

Rural towns need to reinvent themselves, because it isn't about the land, and cities are constantly reinventing themselves, they have lots of money sloshing around, rural towns don't but they can have things money can't buy.

Nasty Weather

2009-10-28T18:51:00.000-06:00

Got a lot of snow, it started last night just after dark and has been snowing all day. We have about a foot on the balcony and it is still coming down. Needed to take out the trash, forgot to do that before the snow started. It is really slippery out there and helped a lady get her car into a spot.
The weather service is saying it will snow tomorrow too.

Week in Apple: New... everything! - Ars Technica

2009-10-25T12:53:00.000-06:00

Week in Apple: New... everything! - Ars Technica

A roundup of Apple news.

Something to shake up even the most blasé

2009-10-22T18:54:00.000-06:00

Now this is seriously cool!

What Every Super Achiever Knows About Time Management – That You Don’t | Investing Notes from REAL Investors

2009-10-06T20:13:00.000-06:00

What Every Super Achiever Knows About Time Management – That You Don’t | Investing Notes from REAL Investors: "Super achievers don’t manage their time, they create, manage and maximize their opportunities. At any given time they know the one critical, must complete, task and they work on that task. It is the most important and therefore deserves their full attention."

Don't lose sight of this.

WorldWatch - September 27, 2009 - Why Union Leaders Are Trying to Destroy Themselves - The Ornery American

2009-10-06T20:00:00.000-06:00

WorldWatch - September 27, 2009 - Why Union Leaders Are Trying to Destroy Themselves - The Ornery American: "Nobody learns from history -- isn't that sad? Now it's the extreme Left (the only kind that seems to exist any more) that behaves exactly like the extreme right of the 1950s, and it will lead to the same result. They look at anti-Communism and instead of learning that extremism, pushed too far, destroys itself; instead they only learn 'anti-Communism was bad' -- which, of course, it wasn't, when it was actually needed."

A lot of things are like that and he goes through a whole bunch of very useful examples. Right now the administrators in Washington are doing more of what's worked in the past but it is going to hurt everyone as they go a law too far.

The mis-measurement mismanagement continues

2009-10-04T19:56:00.000-06:00

Even as layoffs persist, some good jobs go begging - Yahoo! Finance: "The jobs opened up after the lab received federal stimulus money to research energy-efficient buildings. Baker needs employees with backgrounds in city management and a grasp of the building codes needed to design energy-efficient buildings. Yet even a salary of $140,000 for senior researchers isn't drawing enough qualified applicants.

Baker said he's getting resumes from well-educated people, including some from information technology workers who want to enter the green-energy field. But he said it could take a year to get an unqualified employee up to speed on all the building codes they need to know."

It reminds me of a job posting I saw once, a C++ programing fluent in English, Braille and Swahili.

There are lots of smart people out there that can't get a good job since they are missing some requirement or other.

The real question is how long will they let the position stay open before the cost/benefit calculation blows up.

A lot of companies are getting what they pay for even it is not what they really want.

The Believer - Closing Time

2009-09-30T16:07:00.000-06:00

The Believer - Closing Time

A fascination look into the history of cars and car salesmen.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH | More Intelligent Life

2009-09-29T20:02:00.000-06:00

THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH | More Intelligent Life: "In an age of specialists, does it matter that generalists no longer thrive? The world is hardly short of knowledge. Countless books are written, canvases painted and songs recorded. A torrent of research is pouring out. A new orthodoxy, popularised by Malcolm Gladwell, sees obsessive focus as the key that unlocks genius."

I think someone hasn't left his ivory tower for much too long. There are more polymaths then ever. The average person goes thru 5-7 careers, not just jobs, these days.

The job market has been evolving so quickly the last 20 years that whole industries exist now and are major drivers of the economy that didn't exist even as scifi back then. Web designer, information marketer and hosts of others exist now that needed to be filled.

If you have been a monomath half a dozen times is that not the same as being a polymath just without the burnout, or at least the same kind of burnout.

You're looking in the wrong places. Polymaths are not valued by the big institutions, so obviously you won't find them there. They'll be in the small companies, they are the superstars that when they leave for whatever reason the company ends up hiring 3 or more people to replace them because they were so amazing in so many areas.

What a well-placed $20 gets you

2009-09-24T14:08:00.000-06:00

What a well-placed $20 gets you: "Tom Chiarella took a stack of $20 bills with him to New York City just to see what he could get by offering them to the right people at the right time. Turns out, quite a bit."

Interesting. But are the things you are buying worth it?

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: A day at the museum - how much do children actually remember?

2009-09-19T09:53:00.000-06:00

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: A day at the museum - how much do children actually remember?: "Gross's team said the results 'demonstrated that children learned and remembered an extraordinary amount of information about a school trip to a museum' even after a lengthy delay. The findings also showed that giving the children the opportunity to draw, significantly increased the amount of accurate information they recalled. This is consistent with previous, forensically motivated research showing that drawing facilitates children's verbal reports of their experiences."

Isn't it interesting, that we take away our children's crayons in schools about this time.

ht Marginal Revolution

What's up with Google

2009-09-15T13:09:00.001-06:00

First they ignore 9/11 and now they have a crop circle doodle. What's up with that?

TigerHawk

2009-09-14T09:20:00.000-06:00

TigerHawk: "As we have long predicted on this blog, the health care 'reformers' propose to finance at least part of the 'savings' or new benefits -- it is impossible to know which -- by decreasing the rate of return on medical technology. There are many ways in which this might be done, but the Senate Democrats are proposing to do so directly, by levying a 'value added tax' on medical device companies according to their proportion of U.S. sales."

It not that they won't treat you or your grandma, but the treatment won't be as good as it could be. It seems to them that it is more humane to let us suffer for longer, rather then let us be treated.

Cell Phone Radiation Levels

2009-09-09T18:15:00.000-06:00

| Environmental Working Group

Even at the high level these are still pretty low. But it can be a useful tool if you care.
The biggest problem is that it is so hard to figure out how much a cell phone plan costs adding this into the mix won't help.

Out of Work, and Too Down to Search On - NYTimes.com

2009-09-07T18:07:00.000-06:00

Out of Work, and Too Down to Search On - NYTimes.com: "In the most direct measure of job market hopelessness, the bureau has a narrow definition of a group it classifies as “discouraged workers.” These are people who have looked for work at some point in the past year but have not looked in the last four weeks because they believe that no jobs are available or that they would not qualify, among other reasons. In August, there were roughly 758,000 discouraged workers nationally, compared with 349,000 in November 2007, the month before the recession officially began.

The bureau also has a broader category of jobless it calls “marginally attached to the labor force,” which includes discouraged workers as well as those who have stopped looking because of other reasons, like school, family responsibilities or health issues. But economists agree that many of these workers probably would have found a way to work in a good economy.

There were roughly 2.3 million people in this group in August, up from 1.4 million in November 2007. If the unemployment rate were expanded to include all marginally attached workers, it would have been 11 percent in August."

Yeah, it's pretty bad out there. And no one knows for sure exactly how bad because you can't manage the numbers. No everything can be measured and measuring the wrong thing makes things worse. Imagine that.

Calculus Demonstration: 3D printing � 360

2009-09-07T14:05:00.000-06:00

Calculus Demonstration: 3D printing 360: "So what is used for the printing? The article above describes a layer of powder being put down and the printing is actually done by spraying glue instead of ink. Wikipedia also describes printers that build with a liquid gel. But my favorite is printing done with candy."

What...WOW.
I wants one of them.

California Smoke hides the Rockies

2009-09-01T11:56:00.003-06:00

Colorado's hazy skies courtesy of California wildfires - The Denver Post: "The smoke over Colorado — which has made the mountains west of Denver invisible from downtown Denver — has come directly from the massive 85,000-acre wildfire in Southern California, according to the National Weather Service."

Yeah, that's about right. Usually the Rockies dominate the sky, today not so much. This usually happens only during the winter if and inversion layer is sitting on us. It doesn't smell of smoke but then it may have come in slowly enough we can't smell it anymore.
I won't mind the little bit of localized global cooling this will cause.

Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head

2009-08-31T12:50:00.000-06:00

Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head: "Traditionally, schools use this model:

1. Decide on what kids need to know to prepare them for adulthood.
2. Prepare a curriculum based on this.
3. Give students a schedule based on this curriculum.
4. Have educated teachers hand them the info they need, and drill them in skills.
5. The student reads, memorizes the info, learns the skills, and becomes prepared.
6. Students must follow all rules or be punished. This is actually more important than the info and skills, although it’s never said that way.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a great model. Mostly because it’s based on the idea that there is a small group of people in authority, who will tell you what to do and what you need to know, and you must follow this obediently, like robots. And you must not think for yourself, or try to do what you want to do. This will be met with severe punishment."

Yeah, that's about right.

Joel Klein vs. New York City teachers : The New Yorker

2009-08-27T10:36:00.000-06:00

Joel Klein vs. New York City teachers : The New Yorker: "“Children are fragile. Handle with care.” It’s a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room."

Wow.

ht kottke

Seth's Blog: Competing with the singleminded

2009-08-27T10:16:00.000-06:00

Seth's Blog: Competing with the singleminded: "I was talking with a few executives from one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they were explaining how their hands were tied in moving forward on the internet. They were doing the best they could under the circumstances, of course, but there were units in their organization that needed to be protected, prices that needed to be supported, sacred cows that couldn't be touched. After all, they argued, how could they wipe out their current business just to succeed online?"

Ohh, that sounds familiar.

Presentation Zen: Dan Pink: Rethinking the ideology of carrots and sticks

2009-08-27T10:11:00.001-06:00

Presentation Zen: Dan Pink: Rethinking the ideology of carrots and sticks: "We don't need sweeter carrots and sharper sticks, Dan says. We need a whole new approach, an approach that puts more stock in intrinsic motivation. Dan identifies three elements that comprise a new way of thinking about management:

Autonomy: The urge to direct our own lives.
Mastery: The desire to get better at something that matters.
Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves."

A cool presentation. "Punished By Rewards" talked about this years ago and hardly anyone learned from that. I have to wonder if people don't want to learn.

see also johnniemoore et.al.

New Research Examines How Career Dreams Die

2009-08-25T15:19:00.000-06:00

New Research Examines How Career Dreams Die: "Still, Carroll said he doesn't often use what he knows to bring these students back to reality.
'I'm very cautious about using what I know with students,' he said. 'You're dealing with people's dreams and hopes, and with that awareness comes great responsibility.
'The dreams of who you could become are a very important part of how you define yourself, yet they are very vulnerable given that they exist only in our mind's eye as the best possible guesses from current evidence of what we could become in the future,' he said. 'We need to learn more about how those career dreams are constructed and revised.'"

Go find yourself.

Yeah, that's great advice. Not.

Oxytocin != oxycontin

2009-08-19T17:51:00.000-06:00

Oxytocin != oxycontin

Bwahhahahahahaha! I needed that.

Do Americans Care about British Soldiers?

2009-08-19T17:50:00.000-06:00

Do Americans Care about British Soldiers?: "Three Air Force aircraft along with multiple aircrew, aeromedical evacuation teams, and agencies from around the world gave a British soldier a fighting chance at life in late July after the soldier sustained multiple gunshot wounds and had his blood supply replaced more than 10 times at a military hospital in Afghanistan."

Yeah, that's about right.

and we're supposed to be the bad guys. Oh wait the left doesn't talk about the war anymore. I wonder why.