Short Takes
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
January 17, 2012 | 8:54 pmSays psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led [a] study published yesterday…
’The baby in order to imitate you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they’re hearing,’’
Can you “figure out” why this is utter nonsense? I should as obvious as monkey see, monkey do. With this sort of thing passing for science, we are surely doomed.
- The Mark of Cain
November 9, 2011 | 3:13 amWatching Herman Cain duel with his female accusers is like watching the Jerry Springer Show. Not a pretty picture. If you partake, be sure an wash you hands afterwards.
- The Truth About Sovereign Debt
November 1, 2011 | 4:01 pmDuring the housing bubble people bet on rising home prices by taking out loans on to-good-to-be true terms and investment banking made bets on the rising home prices by lending on to-good-be-true terms. Everyone drank the Kool Aid. Prices went down. Having made bad bets, home owners should default on their loans and bankers should take their losses. This is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
The nations that joined the EU placed bets on rising economic prosperity that would come from joining the EU and adopting the Euro and borrowing from the EU banks on to-good-to-be-true terms. The EU investment bankers made speculative bets on EU member nations by lending them billions on to-good-to-be-true terms. The borrower economies went down not up. Everyone drank the Kool Aid and having made bad bets the borrowers should default on their loans and the bankers should take their losses. This too, is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
So how do the bankers hold the world hostage to their bad bets? They claim they are too big to fail. In other words, the only game they know is heads they win, tails we lose.
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- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
Category Archives: Quality
Look at ME, Look at ME!
“…the image of the Lord had been replaced by a mirror.”
Jorge Luis Borges
Today this image of a tightrope walker atop Yosemite’s Cathedral Peak appeared on my Facebook page. It’s rather dramatic, I’ll agree, but upon reflection it strikes me as … Continue reading
Our Powerful Striding Minds
I hold to the idea that as mindful creatures we are naturally given to a joyous disposition. Our minds have come into being as our means for soaring high above a world that bubbles forth, enabling us to navigate our … Continue reading
Freedom Day: Cut the Cord Nov. 5th
The 99-Percenters of the OWS movement are calling upon all freedom seeking Americans to cut themselves loose of their umbilical cords on November 5th, 2011 by transferring their money from profiteering parasitic financial combines to collaboratively owned, not-for-profit credit unions. A great … Continue reading
Educational Snake Oil
As a career educator—teacher, principal and instructional design consultant—I have been complaining for years that the pop-psychology of “learning styles” is worse than nonsense. It is harmful nonsense. In an all to rare story reported by NPR, “Think You’re An … Continue reading
Coca Cola Nights, Morality and Systems Optimization
In the summer of 1965, my first year in college, I worked graveyard in a Los Angeles Coca Cola re-bottling plant where they refilled 5-cent deposit empties. I started-out eager and worked hard and fast, positioning empties on … Continue reading
Betting the Farm
NYT, April 12, 2011 - The condition of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan is “static,” but with improvised cooling efforts they are “not stable,” the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a Senate committee on Tuesday.
Reading between the … Continue reading
The Peak is Nigh!
The headline in yesterday’s Guardian UK reads: “WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices.”
In a WikiLeak cable release, Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, … Continue reading
Private For-Profit Healthcare? You Gotta Be Nuts!
It’s hard to understand why anyone could possibly think that a healthcare system is best organized on a private, “for-profit” model. Why would anyone want to put their life into the hands of a medical system that’s in business to … Continue reading
May All Your Hallucinations Be Bright
I find the crass commercialism of Christ’s birthday celebration rather off-putting. This year it’s the media thing about Christmas being the salvation of American consumerism that’s getting me low.
Economists are hopeful, report the media. The good news is that sales … Continue reading
Design IS Education
If you really care about HOW to get our educational system onto a track that works, then watch this TED video and read my commentary.
“Design IS education” might be better stated “learning IS design”. Nevertheless, the concept illustrated is correct. … Continue reading
Educational Theory and our Race to the Bottom
All learning requires that we have an aim, a purpose, an intention. What is it that we wish to accomplish? This is a theory of learning. If we want to create and continually improve our educational enterprise, we must begin … Continue reading
Reflections on the Nature of Leadership
One morning on our recent passage north aboard our sloop, Songline, I was watching Pelicans, like I do.
Looking very much like prehistoric Pterodactyls, Pelicans sometimes hunt by gliding in a single file formation so tight that the distance between each … Continue reading
Grave Diggers’ Lies
Do you remember a few months back, when the U.S. media was busily burying Toyota’s reputation as the be-all and end-all of automotive quality? To me, the media’s myth-busting paroxysms came off more like a witch-hunt than investigative journalism. Now … Continue reading
The Monumental Stupidity of Obama’s Educational “Plan”
Obama wants to rework G. W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”, which was itself a monument to stupidity. According to the NYT, Obama says that he will,
“…replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ … Continue reading
Lost Leaders
American enterprise has a problem with quality. Pretty much everything we produce is shoddy stuff of questionable value–clever glittering baubles principally designed to come between bedazzled consumers and their wallets. Some say our problem with quality has to do with … Continue reading →