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link round-up
I have some things collecting in tabs, so here's a hodge-podge:
First, border-crossing. You've probably heard by now that border control in the US has gotten aggressive, including demanding passwords for encrypted devices and then taking them out of view for an extended time. You don't have to give up your password, but if you don't, they can confiscate your device for weeks or months for "review". The rights you have against unreasonable search and seizure in the US are not the same as those you have at the border. While they can't deny entry to US citizens, they can to others.
It's important to know what you don't know. David Director Friedman has an interesting idea about applying economics to teaching -- specifically, grading exams.
A lot of the Rands article The New Manager Death-Spiral sounds very familiar.
We all know one of the Internet rules: don't read the comments. The parts of the net I frequent tend to be better than, say, a random sample of YouTube, which is due to a mix of conscientious participants and comment moderation. A while back I came across a comment-moderation policy described as "Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite": they require a comment to be at least two of true, necessary, and kind.
I'm not sure that philosophy applies to windshield notes, but they sure are funny.
How do we know Humpty Dumpty is an egg? The rhyme doesn't say so. Huh, I never thought about that.
Speaking of things I hadn't thought about, have you ever noticed the similarities between fantasy-adventurer settings and westerns?
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Er, that is precisely how the SAT is graded, or was back when I took it in the 1980s. Or rather almost precisely. ET gives 25%. You have to beat one in four odds, as test prep tutors teach everyone minimaxing multiple choice questions.
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There's so much about Scadian culture that makes me want to throw up my hands in disgust and never think about it again, and then I read something like this and am reminded of why there's so much to love about it. I still have no idea how Carolingia, if not the entire Knowne World, got the "leadership means delegation" thing so very deeply and even militantly; I wish I did so I could spread it around.
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Brain. Broken. *wanders off, shaking head*
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If he actually wanted to reduce his grading burden, he would need to provide an incentive. Hopefully by the time they get to a midterm the students will have learned the difference between a real incentive and a marketing spin.
Or, he could see if anybody pays attention to the quality of his grading work and simply assign scores according to prejudice. That would reduce his cost.
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It's the beginning a police state, but we still have time and motivation to prevent it from expanding. Keep pushing back.
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Westerns are traditionally about the loner, or sometimes the posse, righting injustice and then riding off into the sunset. Fantasy novels, at least the murder-hobo ones inspired by D&D games, are more about a persistent party of people righting small wrongs and making a profit along the way, while getting more and more powerful. Or they're about a quest to find and push the Boss Lever, probably after a coming-of-age subplot that is never found in Westerns. (There is no "this is your father's sword" trope, or "you come from mysterious parents"--the Lone Ranger shows up in mid adulthood, not at adolescence.)
Put another way, fantasy is about gathering more and more personal power, possibly so you can then fight the Big Bad and restore the world to how it was. But the emblem of the Western is the Colt revolver for a reason--it was marketed as "the equalizer", and it made it possible for each person to mete out justice as they individually saw fit. But it was bounded--there was no leveling up from there (aside from the "hottest gun in the west" dueling culture).
Anyway. Maybe I'll write a rebuttal. ;)
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Typical "good" scores in the class were 10-12/100. Answering all the questions was considered either very brave or very stupid. I imagine this also meant less for him to grade.
I'm not sure whether people learned better this way, but I think they did learn a little bit about what they actually knew--which might have been, overall, a more useful skill for his class than AP physics.
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This despite delegation being a key skill taught in other similarly hierarchical organizations--notably the military, where being able to delegate, and assess the ability of your delegatees to carry out the task, are both considered crucial parts of the job as you move up the command chain.
I have to think it is because of the rotating cadre of supremely unqualified CEOs and middle managers who persist only because they claim what they're doing is effective despite all evidence to the contrary, while depending on lower-status folks to invisibly pick up the slack and make things actually work.
(Application to the current administration is left as an exercise for the reader.)
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It's quite plausible: Masonry is all about teaching lessons through ritual, and one of the most deeply-set rituals is the way the Lodge runs. You achieve Leadership (being Master of the Lodge) only by passing through most of the Chairs under the Master, over a period (in a healthy Lodge) of 7-11 years. Each of those Chairs has specific responsibilities, and it is *not* cool to micro-manage. Delegation is more or less explicitly one of the key jobs of the Master of the Lodge, and by that point you have a good deal of experience with delegation up, down and sideways.
All far more formalized (and, amusingly, hierarchical) than the SCA, of course, but that's the nature of the clubs...
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