All posts for the month January, 2013

Curriculum has to have a point of view

I have a distaste for the meme “just let them choose what they want to read.” The weakest argument, I think, is that not all students even read x book that was assigned reading: Perhaps 5-7 students take over the role of answering the teacher’s questions. Some, but not likely all, of these students have […]

15 grand

The outgoing South Korean President issued 13,000 pardons during his 5-year term. And that’s a record low. For contrast, US presidents have issued pardons and clemencies 20,000 times in the 20th century.

That typeface isn’t a a font nor are serifs legible

Fonts and typefaces have a container/content relationship. It’s true, look it up. Consider that font refers to the box that holds the math, which in turn defines or describes the style of a set of characters. Font is the file, the typeface is the stuff in the file. Meanwhile, serif fonts shouldn’t necessarily be considered […]

Armstrong’s choke and breathe

Fascinating that Armstrong’s body language gets some ink. Also predictable that there are a bunch of comments following the piece ridiculing that analysis. When I talk to maths and science teachers about working with low-proficiency students I have often (and yes, I do get eye rolls) implore them to try and read the students. If […]

Between a pebble and a really hard rock

Videos with subtitles aren’t quite ubiquitous yet, and as a language teacher I find this frustrating. Don’t misinterpret: providing subtitles to students so they can depend on them isn’t the idea. It’s a way to keep the message multi-modal, which just means that I think communication is done best when it’s done in a variety […]

Slickmeister stopped in his tracks

Heh: He was the firm’s top coder for many quarters and was considered expert in C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Python. Turns out the dude was outsourcing all his coding to some Chinese firms. Proof that, you know, expertise like that can only be handled by a herd rather than a single entity. […]

No amount of charity makes up for this

“You can’t take that away from him,” … the charity work. I have a feeling that Armstrong’s interview with Oprah at some point is going to focus on the charity work that he’s done. So I want to preempt that by pointing out that arrogance in the face of the plain truth is a complete […]

Krugman agrees with me!

Yesterday I expressed surprise that Jon Stewart got the trillion dollar coin thing wrong. Today, Krugman said, Part of the point about Stewart … is that he’s funny, but that the show is actually better informed than most of our public discussion. It’s a shame I didn’t say more than I did, because I was […]

Comedy of trillionairres

John Stewart has a brilliant mind, which is why I’m surprised he doesn’t get that the trillion dollar coin idea is just an accounting thing. It’s not like making up money. Or. Maybe he thought that the laughs were too much to pass up.

dsmvwlng

Hands up if you know what I’m talking about. You have a piece of code, perhaps a block about 15 lines that prepares for one statement, say, an if statement. Those 15 lines, all they do is take some data and reform it into a useful format so that when it comes time to execute […]