Salon: Can bells and whistles save the book?
“What matters is not the story on the page — or the screen — but the story in your head. Interactive baubles pull a reader’s attention back to the screen, serving as a reminder of the thing you want to go on forgetting: the fact that all of this is just made up, words on a page. Some enhanced e-book publishers have cottoned onto this problem and as a result they’ve moved away from inserting video or clickable illustrations into their books, and in new directions.” And yet ... the newer generations absorb information and ‘story’ in fundamentally different ways, don’t they? They live with multitasking and distraction and construct coherent narratives. I like this article, but can’t completely buy into it.
LA Review of Books: True Story.
The mythology of film school. “With each passing year, a new and ever-growing horde of students arrives, checkbooks at the ready, poised to live out the Steve Boman dream. But film school is not a dream or a myth; it is a school, a place to learn the nuts and bolts of shooting a movie. If you are looking for anything more than that, buyers beware.” All the best folks I worked with, learned by doing ... working in the industry. Starting at the bottom and pushing upwards.
WSJ: What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?
“The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems that interact to turn children into adults.” I remember, as a kid, not being able to correlate my logical brain to my physical actions. I’ll have to keep track of this ... fascinating.
benhammer.de: Twins by Martin Schoeller.
The same, yet different.
NY Times: Children’s A.D.D. Drugs Don’t Work Long-Term.
“Attention-deficit drugs increase concentration in the short term, which is why they work so well for college students cramming for exams. But when given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems. The drugs can also have serious side effects, including stunting growth. Sadly, few physicians and parents seem to be aware of what we have been learning about the lack of effectiveness of these drugs.”
NY Times: Does Technology Affect Happiness?
“Among the crucial questions that the researchers were not able to answer is whether the heavy use of media was the cause for the relative unhappiness or whether girls who are less happy to begin with are drawn to heavy use of media, in effect retreating to a virtual world.” This article will be the subject of many conversations, I suspect.
Boston Review: Citizen Philosophers
“Teaching philosophy to students who can hardly read and write [snip] is sad foolishness.” Someone needs to introduce him to the story of Jaime Escalante.
Northwestern University: Another Clue in the Mystery of Autism.
CarlZimmer.com: King of the Cosmos.
Profile of Neil deGrasse Tyson. An enjoyable romp.
Big Think: Innumeracy (In a Data-Driven Age).
“Innumeracy, in a data-driven age, means ceding control and understanding of an substantial chunk of yourself – your online reputation, the scores that colleges and employers use to screen out undesirable candidates – to others.” Hmmm. I suspect, as with other data, we’re simply counting on having calculators and other devices around (smartphones). The likelihood of anyone needing to calculate a hypotenuse sans smartphone or other device is rather small nowadays. Yet using our brains for mathematical calculations is the equivalent to the benefits of taking a long vigorous walk, isn’t it? Good for the old synapses?
Guardian.UK: YA novel readers clash with publishing establishment .
Hoover Institution: The Death of Honesty.
In talking with teachers, I’ve heard that policing cheating is nigh impossible with the internet available as a resource. Some kids do it and never give a thought to the right/wrong morality, they think everything is free; others do it tentatively, while some go whole-hog and just don’t care. A perceptive teacher has to make judgments from the childrens’ character ... working within the internet culture of ‘cheating’ (some call it ‘repurposing’) to teach larger lessons.
Anyone else care to chime in?
Salon: Who’s afraid of “The Tempest”?
Hopefully, AZ is not our future in America.
Vimeo: The Future Belongs to the Curious.
Indeed. And well-done.
SF New Mexican: Proposal would require background checks on foster parents, relatives.
Unfortunate, but necessary. Gone are the days when “Greatest Generation” families did it for love, not the pittance paid out by child welfare services.
Lists of Note: A Decalogue of Canons.
Thomas Jefferson, with some timeless advice:
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
... and more.
The .net strip #12: No! That’s spec work!
WSJ: Hostess Brands, Maker of Twinkies, Preparing for Chapter 11 Filing.
Profit-seeking dentists will mourn, I suppose. I had a friend who used to dunk ‘em into Coke and eat. Makes my teeth ache just thinking about it.
Chronicle of Higher Ed: Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?
Statistics can lie, of course. I’ve run across many college graduates who couldn’t spell or add figures. Do the diminutive jobs mean there is too much education, or might it also mean that education is failing? There are a lot of larger questions that plain numbers are not going to answer.
The right wing of American politics has hated public schools for eons, attacked them and handicapped them gleefully since Reagan, and this broader attack on intelligence seems a recent ante-up in their game. As we have “Just In Time” manufacturing, it seems we should only have “Just Enough” intelligence.
When was excess intelligence, unused capacity, ever a bad thing for a human being? You can’t predict the future. A person can work in many different industries, at many different levels in a lifetime. Time and again I’ve used pieces and parts of what I’ve learned, and I’ve been damned grateful for all of it.
NY Times: Teenager’s Death a Reminder of Gun Replicas’ Dangers.
This has been a problem for years. Even some water pistols have been terribly realistic. I will not fault law enforcement on this, given the evidence provided. Make sure your kids don’t carelessly wield replicas in public.
The Atlantic: Don’t Let the Economy Pick Your Major For You.
For your family and friends who are still in school.
WaPo: New study shows architecture, arts degrees yield highest unemployment.
“Among recent college graduates, those with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), according to the study.” Ouch. One expects this in a down economy.
The Atlantic: The 23 Best Countries for Work-Life Balance (We Are Number 23).
Not surprising, this ‘exceptional’ performance ...
