Tag Archives: responsibilities

Get Rid of Calculus in High School?

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James Makarian, SnapLogic CTO, thinks high school calculus is overrated; he’d rather see statistics and computer science get the emphasis.

I agree: don’t teach calculus in senior high school.  Push it down into freshman/late junior high classes.  Then do computer science and statistics in close sequence behind the calc course.  It’s not possible to do more than (badly) cookbook statistics without the underlying arithmetic.  And cookbooking something as serious as statistics means the related research will be badly done more often than not or badly understood by those reading the research.

Lack of underlying arithmetic also will limit computer “science” to work that doesn’t involve arithmetic: first tier tech support where all the junior rep can do is run through a checklist whose steps may or may not address the confused problem description coming to him over the phone.  Actual computer or related development won’t be possible.

And this: the thinking style and rigor associated with learning calculus has its own value wholly independent of whether the high/jr high schooler would ever do arithmetic as he pursues his non-STEM college studies and career.

“Iran deal: The European Union’s ugly options”

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That’s the headline of a Deutsche Welle piece regarding the impact on Europe of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Executive Agreement that sought to codify Iran’s “right” to obtain nuclear weapons, if Iran were to have only a little patience and wait until the Agreement’s blocks, such as they are, expire in a few years.

Then Ten Schultz, the author of the article, opened with this statement.

The United States’ withdrawal from the Iran deal, despite the personal pleadings of Europe’s most powerful politicians, has provided one more example that President Donald Trump has no hesitation in dismissing European interests and trans-Atlantic concerns.

Of course, it couldn’t possibly be the case that Europe’s most powerful politicians have no hesitation in dismissing American interests and trans-Atlantic concerns.  No, of course not: those worthies are lily-pure.

Schultz then touts his false choice:

…stand up to Trump in efforts to preserve the deal…or to acquiesce to whatever Washington wants, even if it means abandoning a UN-approved agreement they brokered and believe in.

Never mind that for 16 months Trump has been trying to get those most powerful politicians to negotiate to shore up the deal and fill its glaring gaps and that those worthies have steadfastly refused to negotiate.  It’s certainly true that French President Emmanuel Macron came to DC offered pretty words about wanting to satisfy three of Trump’s four pillars that would have done the shoring up.  It’s also true that German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to DC to insist personally that the US stay with the deal.  Macron had nothing, though, other than his pretty words.  He had no concrete proposals to offer—just that willingness to keep talking in lieu of acting.  Merkel didn’t even have that much.

The UN? That’s just a debating society for politicians with nothing else to do with their countries’ payroll money.  It’s certainly been unwilling to do anything serious about Iran’s threats—and lately outright attacks—against Israel, or about Iran’s missile attacks on Saudi Arabia via their client terrorists in Yemen (itself wracked by an Iranian-caused and supported civil war).

That debating society refuses, also, to deal with Iran’s active missile development program (for which the Yemen launches serve as excellent OT&E evaluations).  Keep in mind that, for all of Iran’s future nuclear weapons—they could build dozens of them—those bombs are useless without a means of delivering them to Iran’s targets.  Missiles are a central such means.  Oh, and this: the most powerful politicians’ UN also has barred Iran from doing missile development.  Those politicians are conveniently silent about that.

And never mind that Iran has never signed the Obama Agreement.

No, it’s all Trump’s fault.  It’s all America’s fault.

We had enough of that during Obama’s eight years.  It’s about time we regained our willingness to act unilaterally when our allies won’t even talk seriously with us about joint action.

They Shouldn’t Let…

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…the door hit them in the fanny on the way out.

About a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the tech giant’s involvement in Project Maven, a controversial military program that uses artificial intelligence, Gizmodo reports.

Maven is a DoD project for developing an AI capability to quickly process vast amounts of drone-generated data for human decision-makers.  Such a capability, if successfully developed, would enhance our war-fighting—and especially our war-winning—capability.

These ex-employees should consider their view of citizenship in light of their view that the US should not be allowed to take steps to defend itself.

And then they should have the moral courage to publish the results of their analysis.

Offensive

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Three dentists in North Carolina dressed up in traditional clothing of an American Indian, a Japanese, and a Scot in order to run an advertisement under the catchphrase “Everyone smiles in the same language!”

Oh, the hoo-raw.  SJWs crawled out through their baseboard holes on this one, proclaiming the ad to be “ignorant and offensive” and racist.

No.  What’s ignorant and offensive is the naked racism of manufacturing a beef where there is none for the sole purpose of supporting the professional victim industry.

An Education Failure

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A Miami-Dade police officer’s 14-year-old daughter dissed her teacher at Pinecrest Cove Preparatory Academy charter school, and her father was called to the school.  The video at the link shows the ensuing abuse: the “father” whipped his daughter with his belt, slugged her, yanked her hair.  Fortunately, no serious physical damage appears to have been done, but I have to wonder about the emotional damage, I have to wonder about the quality of her home life, and I have to wonder whether that life might have been a factor in her relationship with her teacher.

But that’s not what the only thing wrong here (the cop has been charged with a felony child abuse beef, so there may be a measure of justice coming on that front).

Look at the video carefully.  The abuse occurs in the school’s office with two school employees alternately watching and going about their business (one is at the bottom of the video imagery; she’s not easy to see).  They didn’t lift a finger to intervene, they didn’t say a word in intervention.  The employee plainly visible just goes on about her job, if not her duty; the other employee is similarly uninvolved.  The reporter narrating the scene says this woman was pregnant and feared for her baby’s welfare as well as the 14-year-old; maybe that’s an excuse.  But she waited until the cop had left before she called any authority or otherwise reported the beating.  The reporter didn’t say anything about the other woman, who was similarly too timid to act, but without an apparent excuse for her avoidance.

This…timidity…gives charter schools a bad name.  And it’s despicable in its own right.