The problem with the Dear and Glorious Leader is that he's a prick

It seems that simple dinner party courtesy is beyond him.

We sorta don't live in a science fiction universe

I've never read a science fiction story where there were so many dwarf stars in the immediate neighborhood of the earth. I wish I could think of a neat, Asimov-esque plot to make use of them.

Th question is not "Can a Mormon be President?". The question is "How on earth do they plan to explain Mormonism and not get run out of the country?"

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. If he believes in the things that the LDS teaches, then he is batshit insane.

Am I the only one who thinks it is complete and utter madness for the GOP to even consider someone who beleives that God has a physical body and lives on a planet orbiting the star Kobol? Someone who believes that you have to wear magic underwear all the time? Someone who believed, until 1978, that black were not fully human? Someone who beleives that the American Indians were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel? Someone who beleives that God visits his office in Salt Lake City to talk to the LDS leaders from time to time? Joshua Crust.

LDS teaches those things. Teaches them as truth. Do not let this sort of lunatic enter into the public discourse.

Also, don't remind me that Harry Reid is a Mormon, too. I'm just trying to block that out of my mind.

My part in an experiment

It seems that Acephalous is attempting to measure the propogation rate of the web. I link to his site and ask my readers who blog to do the same and he tracks the results through Technocrati. so, if you want to play, link to http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html.

This has been a public service announcement.

Looks like faithful coach driver Netley to me

It seems that some Brits have cobbled up a recreation of the face of the Ripper. Feh. Seems to be aimed at drumming up rating for a British teevee show. I don't seem to recall any eye witnesses whom it could determined had actually seen the murderer.

But, I'm sure our local Ripperologist will chime in momentarily with the facts.

Y'know that famous statue of the she-wolf and the twins?

Seems that it isn't Etruscan after all. Gosh.

Education and the achievement gap

This article* confirms what my intuition has told me for the last 20-something years: the problem is that kids in poverty are given a different kind of upbringing. It also suggests that anything we do to eliminate the achivement gap will make it worse: our best methods will work best with those children who already have the foundations for learning. It's like what Goethe said about good teaching: it only works on those who don't need it.

Colleges of education foster the idea that the problems are insurmountable; I've seen this and heard it first hand. Serious research, with real mathematics and real neurobiology scares the bejeezus out of education academics. They don't want simple answers that are pointed to by numbers. They will reject it out of hand as "simplistic" or "unrealistic." And, yes, I meant for those quote marks to be interpreted literally. Education academics are the academy's most insecure members. Mostly because they know that they are pretty much frauds. They know *nothing* about how learning takes place and they can't understand the statistics that show them what's happening. All their papers quote the papers of other education academics and so they engage in tail-chasing and thesis padding.

In my many years of association with public educaiton, I've seen innumerable "programs" put in place that, in the end, only accomplished the enrichment of the program creator. *Nothing* works for every kid. *Nothing* works at every site. *Nothing* will be implemented the same at a different location, at a different time, by different people. The variables tend to swamp the data, obscuring the real information.

We need to rely on neurologists, anthropologists, and statisticians to tell us what happens when kids learn and what the real influcences are. Then we can create schools that might be able to reach the broad base of the student population.




*Oh, the link to the article may require a password. You can steal one at www.bugmenot.com.

Rugby is just weird

And apparently Welsh and/or New Zealander rugby is weirder than most.

We live in a science fiction universe -- Part 43,715

Greg and Chuck probably know all about this stuff. Greg probably has a couple of new game machines but this is pretty close to the "data glove" that I want to operate my PC with.

Not all cultures are of equal value, particularly Ethiopian culture

This is lunatic. Do they not know where baby lions come from?

On the other hand, I suspect that the zoo is not accredited by any international zoo accrediting outfits so no real zoo in the West can/will take the cubs from them.