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Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
And you thought ‘Alien’ was fiction
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007Stormy weather
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog has an interesting post about storm frequency and the claims of various climate change advocates.
And, on the subject of storms, it’s been raining a lot here, lately. This is what one of my planters currently looks like:
Ruminations on punctuation
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007Robert Samuelson talks here about commas, diverging into a mention of multitasking and trends in work hours in industrialized nations. It’s an interesting column, and the theme ties in with my recent minor rant.
The hand is quicker than the eye
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007This is a video of John Scarne performing card manipulations. Very impressive stuff. I wanted to embed the video, but it didn’t seem to want to be embedded.
I remember reading a book titled “How to Cheat at Cards” when I was in high school. I remember it as a book, but the only references to that title I find online are to a chapter of the book “Scarne on Cards” (which I own), and to that chapter’s reprinting as a magazine article in Life magazine in 1949.
I may be misremembering (it wouldn’t be the first time), but because Scarne made an effort to educate servicemen to the tricks employed by card sharps during World War II, and it was a military library I read it at, it’s possible that it was a pamphlet reprinting the chapter that was put out specifically for the military. I own a couple of LPs that were sold only through the military BX/PX system, so it’s not an unreasonable assumption.
Want to learn?
Monday, July 16th, 2007If so, you may find this site useful. I own several of the videos they offer (in the music instruction and luthierie categories), but there are many more that I’d be interested in seeing.
More on Anthropogenic Global Warming
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007I linked a few days ago to Coyote’s post on the reliability of warming data. Since then, he has released version 1.0 of his Skeptical Layman’s Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming. I’ve barely started it, but, based on his earlier posts on the subject, I expect that it will be pretty good.
On this day in history
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007In 1284, the Pied Piper lured 130 children from the village of Hamelin. Other things also happened on this day; I just wanted to note the Pied Piper thing.
Language lessons
Friday, June 8th, 2007Kind of a gaudy page design, but it looks interesting.
It was a 50-50 chance, and
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007… he did not pick wisely.
I remember this sort of thing, too
Friday, May 4th, 2007I don’t know if I used this algebra book when I was in high school, but it certainly looks familiar. Part 2 of the discussion of the book can be found here.
I used to read a couple of education blogs fairly regularly a few years ago, but I haven’t recently – at least one of the ones I used to read shut down, and my daughter has graduated from high school, so horror stories about elementary and high school shortcomings are no longer of quite the same interest to me.
The reproduced pages from the algebra book certainly bring back memories, and the comments about the type of questions and the grammar really highlight the dumbing down of education over the years. Concentrating too much on social indoctrination, I guess. I do enjoy how the article ends:
And you wonder why we geezers can make change and these kids can’t?
I’ll have to dig out my old high school yearbook – I placed in the top ten in Texas for mental arithmetic competition my senior year (for my size of high school, at least). I may even have one of the old tests hanging around.