Headlines

I've been trolling Google News a lot recently and thought I'd share some of the more interesting stories:

First up, 12 top-selling 7-11 stores are converting to Kwik-E-Marts in a promotion for the upcoming Simpson's Movie. All stores will be offering Simpsons-related merchandise (including pink-frosted sprinkle-topped donuts, mmmm) as well. The only thing missing, according to one report, is the lack of an armed robbery. Thank you, come again. (http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=4082c01a-a201-4b22-8c30-1f51e4a41a5a)

I've been trying to find a good link for this one, mostly so I can get more details, but the article I want to read seems to have been slash-dotted (not exactly, but that's the term for a server being overwhelmed because the link is on the front page of the geek-and-nerd site, and this is the top link about the story on Google Neews). What I have already read goes something like this: the Supreme Court ruled that race can no longer be a deciding factor in public school placement. My guess is that this goes all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education and similar rulings of the era where segregation was ended and diversity achieved by busing students from one district to another. I'm not sure how we're supposed to achieve racial diversity if we can't make decisions based on race. Then again, I'm not sure we should be in the business of forcing racial diversity on people. I understand the arguement that people need to be exposed to different ideas and backgrounds, and I agree with it, but when that boils down to just bringing in people of a different race, how is that fair to either side? Maybe you have a poor district near a middle-class district (and I'm not going to assume that the black neighborhood is the poor one, which it seems is the assumption 99% of the time). High school students in the poorer neighborhood need after-school jobs to get by. They won't be going to college because, in general, they can't afford it. Most of the students will be getting a job right out of high school while a lucky few will go to a trade school or earn an associates degree. In the middle-class neighborhood, almost all the students will be going to some post-secondary school, mostly state universities with some going off to the Ivy League. How does the mixing of the schools benefit the students? Those who are college-bound are now in classes with those who have no reason to be there (and, speaking from experience, often show it). It doesn't matter if the college-bound students are white or black, being around a bunch of people who don't care means you don't have to try as hard to succeed, and that means you don't work as hard at it. In four years, when these college students graduate, they are going to wall themselves off in their own middle-class neighborhoods and remember how the other kids held them back in school, creating the very class differences that this law was trying to tear down. You want to remove some of these distinctions? Great, it can only help bring the country together, but the education system needs to be where we teach kids how to read, write, do math, and, God forbid, think. What would this world come to if instead of having kids memorize the year the Magna Carta was signed, we have them think about the changes that brough to Europe, how those changes affected people's lives, and how the new way of thinking lead to our own Founding Fathers' ideas about government? And that's just history. Rather than memorizing the 206 bones in the human body, why don't we teach kids how to understand the physical world around them? Science projects shouldn't be about going through the motions and following a set of steps. They should be about inquiry and understanding something new, then fitting that understanding into a clear, logical format. That's how science and engineering work. That's how discoveries are made. Imagine, explore, create, then bring it together in a way other people can follow what you did. I'm often critical of majors with no redeeming value (i.e. liberal arts), but I should be careful to point out that without a well-written report, engineering is just a stack of paper that only one person can hope to decipher. Understanding your audience and presenting things in a way they can read, understand, and be convinced is crucial for development. My criticism stems from the fact that most of the time, these majors avoid science like the plague. Professors, and often students, feel that the degree stands on its own, when it really has to stand as support for our science-driven world. There are no industrial philosophers and very few professional book-readers (critics), but understanding the philosophical basis for morality and ethics is key in science and engineering (whatever your position on things like stem cells, you need to understand what the argument is before you start sounding off). Reading and dissecting other people's writing is probably the most important thing a scientist can do to advance knowledge. Examples can be found in almost all liberal arts fields (except Latin, that one is just for fun). The problem is that when I walk into a liberal arts building, I'm walking into enemy territory. They don't want me there. I'm conservative, I think for myself, and I won't put up with their [expletive deleted]. That's not to say all of them are bad people, or any of them are. A lot of what they do is helpful to the understanding of the questions of how and why, and I'm not saying we get rid of any programs. Psychology is often mis-defined as a liberal art when, if done right, is as much a hard science as biology. History gives us perspective about hows and whys of the past, which are often paralleled in the present. Languages are how we communicate. Everything has its place, but in a science and technology driven world, the place for English majors and teachers isn't to produce literary critics. It's to improve everyone's ability to read, understand, and then communicate back the important details. No one, in their job, is going to be handed Frankenstein and be asked to analyze the metaphor of the monster as a symbol for the industrial age (I made that up, good essay topic, no?). They'll be given a sales report, or simply raw sales data, and asked to summarize the key points for their boss. The perfect end result is as short as possible while providing all the information needed to make the right decision. The end result is not "write three pages then stop."

I had at least one more thing, but I have to get to school now. I didn't mean to get on quite the rant I just did. More later, I hope.