Education and Streaming Video

There are vendors who want schools to transport vast archives of video files over their networks for educational purposes. The idea is that a teacher can have her choice of appropriate material constantly available for curriculum needs. Some Districts have already spent money on it.

I believe that the majority of educational video content should continue to be provided by cable distribution.

Mark Cuban posted a thoughtful rant (possible oxymoron here)about getting video files (1)hosted and (2) transported across the limited bandwidth available to large numbers of folks.

The Broward District School Board in South Florida has about 250,000 students on any given day. There are 134 teachers at my modestly sized high school which gives you an idea of how many classrooms might be viewing something. It has *one* network with equivalent capacity of one or two T1 connections to each location where there may be from 400 elementary to 2000 high school students.

Granted, there are display devices that serve up to 25 students at once. But assuming modest use, this is going to strain the dickens out of the network of people actually use it.

Let's look at an alternative. Each school district has a broadcasting license for television which allows them to become a mini cable provider.

The bandwidth of commercial cable providers is so immense that the content available is pitifully inadequate to fill it. Think of the 490 channels you don't actually watch. The average teenager regularly views from 7 to 12 networks at home. That's from my freshman class survey done annually in the Fall for the last seven years. Yes they're self-selected, but *for* geekiness, not against. The mode is around 9.

Video files can still be delivered on the Internet, but most of the time teachers and students should be able to tune into the content they need with a cable-like service.

Science Tatoos

There is no longer a question as to whether Scientists have them. The question is, who has better ones?

(a) Physicists
(b) Biologists
(c) Mathematicians
(d) Marine Biologists [cause they're not *just* biologists]
(e) Name your own fav

LINK

The Next Big Thing Might Not be What You Expected

The Edge Annual Question has stimulated Sam Harris to propose reliable lie detection as a something that would change society. He is entirely correct. But I would like to point out something that may adulterate the overwhelming joy, should it come to pass. I'm not taking issue with Harris. Far from it.

We all understand the concept of social compacts because we are the "law-abiding" and the "good" citizens. The last eight years of extreme conservative rule making should make it clear that there are things the American People hold dear. The "potential for human life" is one of them. Another is our duty to invade another country and change things if we suppose our friends are not being treated right. Harris couches it in terms of tension between absolute morality and moral dilemma.

Absolute standards may label a thief as a bad person. A burglar may not subscribe to the complete social compact as understood by your average minister, but he wouldn't necessarily hurt you on purpose. Likewise, I may not subscribe to the concept that human life begins at the time of fertilization.

Harris imagines it happening thus:

Well-intentioned people would happily pass between zones of obligatory candor, and these transitions will cease to be remarkable. Just as we’ve come to expect that many public spaces will be free of nudity, sex, loud swearing, and cigarette smoke—and now think nothing of the behavioral changes demanded of us whenever we leave the privacy of our homes—we may come to expect that certain places and occasions will require scrupulous truth-telling. Most of us will no more feel deprived of the freedom (to) lie during a press conference or a job interview than we currently feel deprived of the freedom to remove our pants in a restaurant.

What if there is a location-dependent social compact where it is acceptable to smoke or remove your pants? What happens when you leave the area? Do you magically change from being good to being bad?

Harris suggests in a presentation at the Salk Institute that objective measurement is a solution. I agree.

The future might be *squirmy*.

Google Reader

It's official - among my students at any rate - the new Reader design is not eyeball friendly.

Blogging in Class

If you had asked me a while back if blogging in class was going to be an issue, I would have said no.

Now, maybe.

If it's reflective in nature because of interest in class discussion, it's great. I guess it's a gauge of interest like twittering.

The I-4 Corridor

The map of Florida counties gives lie to the I-4 corridor fantasy.

Note that at one end lie Hillsboro and Pinellas and at the other Orange and Osceola, counties that voted Democrat for Obama.

In the middle, the vast Southern Baptist stretch of pasture voted Republican for McCain. Polk, Lake, Pasco, and Sumter counties lie to each side of I-4 between Tampa and Orlando.

If you want to see I-4 as a lever for change for the Republican party in the past, the current configuration is a better description.

It resembles a dumbbell.

The I-4 dumbbell... Yes, it has a ring of truth.

Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible

I cast about in vain last night for an appropriate metaphor for life. Or as my kids would say, "in vein." Which made me think about my relationship with them as a teacher.

It occurred to me (BIONG!) that my relationship with them is a defining thing but for that to work for me, the concept has to include the rest of you, Gentle Readers.

I have concluded that the only world-view I can embrace is that of Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ but not as a central character.

I am a porpoise.

I believe it was Wednesday after my first class of the day when I mentally addressed my departing students with, "Goodbye, and thanks for the fish."

Look into the story my friends, you will find your situation mirrored somewhere. I wonder if at some point in my life, I can suggest to every one that Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible.

Why, you ask?

Because it more closely resembles reality.

Plot synopsis here:
Wikipedia entry for Adams' wonderful book.

Thanks for listening. If I had arms, I would hug all of you. Now give me a fish!

Is Sarah Palen Holding a Viper to Her Breast?

@ BoingBoing.net, this appears, itself a quote but at the original not elaborated.

Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted an unidentified “writer” who extolled the virtues of small-town America: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” (9/3/08) The unidentified writer was Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969), the ultraconservative newspaper columnist whose widely syndicated columns (at its peak, 200 newspapers and 12 million readers) targeted the New Deal establishment, labor leaders, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews, and poets.

But it's not about Palen's lack of discrimination. All politicians are barbarians when it comes to pillaging the intellect. It's their birthright.

The quote informs us about the speech writers, not Palen. What politician would reject such a high sounding quote about the nobility of the common man? Perhaps Obama would have spoken it had the same quote been placed in his hands.

My point is that it is a speech writer making an indirect and ultimately sly reference to an obscure source, maybe as a joke but most certainly in a thoroughly cynical way. It is the face of an up and coming young Ben Stein in the ranks of Republican speechwriters.

It says to me that the people who control the day to day operation of the campaign are buffoons when it comes to something that should be important to their integrity as citizens.

Is the lady holding a viper to her breast? I suppose that would indicate a desire to follow Dubbya into obscurity...

Sarah Palen and Joe Biden debate on 10-02-2008 or "Exxon Stooge Shows up for Humiliation Show"

Palen appeared to have been briefed by someone who wanted her to display the fearful and reactionary low spots of the Bush administration's two terms.

You can pick your own favorite. This is my blog and I am only interested in two things. Global warming and Iraq.

I expect that after her son returns from Iraq as mine did, Palen will have her opinion changed for her unless her son is isolated from the people of Iraq.

On the other hand, her opinion on global warming displays a total lack of contact with reality. She has adopted the fallback position of ExxonMobil which is no real surprise. Exxon has had a very strong influence on the Bush administration's science policy and Sarah Palen appears to have been hand picked to continue the tradition of pandering to those who, in Fox News parlance, "Can Make Up Their Own Minds" which means exactly the opposite of what it says.

The Wisdom of Crowds Questioned

Slashdot (as an entity) has been whining about the nasty email it gets accusing it of bias.

Of course there is the perception that as in any human filtered media organization, bias happens naturally.

I have been thinking about crowd bias. If you have a crowd of "evangelical christians" for example, what kind of crowd stupidity would come out of it on account of commonly held misconceptions?

Let's take the misunderstanding of the historic origin of "when human life begins" in common usage in the U.S.

In the 1960s, as a part of its general rethinking of liturgy and philosophy, the Catholic Church considered the question of when human life begins. The context was this: Humanity has rights as a group that are different from individual rights. The rights and responsibilities of the group need to be considerate of its members who have no way of making themselves heard. These may be oppressed populations in different locations or they may be the unborn members of the community of humans.

The theologians consulted with biologists to clarify what was then understood as constituting life and came to the conclusion that they couldn't tell when life began. To be on the safe side, they (Roman Catholic policymakers) decided that life begins when the possibility of life exists.

American theologians, taking this as excellent advice, incorporated the new policy into their thoughts.

What we are left with is a conflict between the rights of the family of humans versus the rights of the individual based on a decision so conservative it verges on fantasy.

Gradually, groups who incorporated this into their core belief systems have come to make it a matter of faith.

Catholics, in their admirable love-hate relationship with Rome are somehow able to distance themselves from a good deal of this but evangelicals who are as a matter of belief are in daily direct tow-way communication with God have forgot that it wasn't the result of a divine utterance.