Posts Tagged With: Opinions

I Want Televised Debates

Posted on August 20, 2006

I want televised debates. Not shouting matches, and definitely not 10-second-soundbite debates. I want the kind of debate you do in high school, where each side gets three minutes to present their side of an argument, and the other side gets a rebuttal and then their argument, etc. If people think this is too slow for TV, put a frame on the side with bullet point summaries. Debate shouldn't be a process reserved for political candidates, and it shouldn't be painful, although we make it so because we never do it. Debate is the most direct way to challenge your opinions and test your rationales. Furthermore, it builds the intelligence, rhetorical skill, and information of the audience. I wish we could get professors, big business, rightwing nutcases, totally ordinary people, leftwing nutcases, and the Army on the TV screen for debate. Disagreement makes compelling TV, as anyone who watches reality TV can tell you. The writers in reality TV script in extra conflict to increase the tension and thus the viewership. Why can't we do the same for our opinions? In Britain they have the House of Commons, and every month the Prime Minister has to present himself for questioning. Not only is that entertaining, but Britain's better off for it. Tony Blair has to defend his positions, and is held accountable for how he's governed. We need debate because no one in America listens to anyone else anymore. Right-leaning people can read WSJ, Drudge Report, and watch Fox News, left-leaning people can read NYT and watch CNN, and the president can listen to his Cabinet, and get completely different descriptions of the same events. Debate makes everyone watch the same thing and confronts viewers with contrary opinions. Here's a sample card. Put this on PrimeTime one after the other and make Bryant Gumbel the host, everyone likes Bryant Gumbel. Tell me you wouldn't pay to watch these. Lawrence Lessig vs. the RIAA McDonalds vs. Morgan Spurlock Michael Moore vs. Bill O'Reilly Billy Graham vs. Michael Newdow (the guy who sued to remove the Pledge of Allegiance) Dave Chappelle vs. The White Race Single Mother vs. Her Aborted Fetus (Republicans would try to stage this one, I swear) David Bowie ("Under Pressure") vs. Vanilla Ice (It's Not the Same, I Swear) Harry Truman (Buck Stops Here) vs. George Bush Jr. (Anyone But Me, Please) Richard Dawkins vs. Kansas Education Board Bill vs. Hillary, with Monica as moderator James Inhofe ("Global Warming is a Giant Hoax") vs. The Scientific Community Jon Stewart vs. Tucker Carlson, Part II Any British MP vs. Any Senator, and I'll take the MP 99 times out of 100 If you're with me, spread the word.

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Penn ‘Slips’ to #7 in US News Rankings

Posted on August 20, 2006

The 2007 US News & World Report Rankings are out, and Penn has fallen from #4 to #7 in rankings. US News ranks colleges on the following criteria: Peer assessment score, freshman retention rate, performance vs. expected graduation rate, % full-time faculty on payroll, student SAT scores, admit rate, alumni giving rank, student-faculty ratio, and freshmen in the top 10% of high-school class. In essence, the criteria for ranking colleges are how succes-driven the students are, how many students apply, and how good those students are. Unfortunately, these rankings are popular for the same reason that colleges use SAT scores - they provide a criteria for comparing two things, no matter how skewed, and the people/colleges that score highly are too proud and happy that they don't want to criticize it. All of these criteria are only secondary ways to measure how good of an education School X is offering. The criteria for evaluating schools must be the education the school is able to impart to the student, not a measure of the students, because some schools attract more gifted students than others. Better, more direct criteria would include student evaluations of teacher quality, student evaluations of their academic experience, peer college evaluations of teacher quality, (for engineering schools) ability to do research, average class size or % classes above 50 (the one criteria I would keep from the above), the success of students at getting into graduate level programs, number of Fulbright/Rhodes scholars produced compared to schools with similar admit rates, and perhaps the average starting salary of graduates, divided by field. I would also under no circumstances rank engineering schools alongside liberal arts schools, because there's no way you can quantify that going to MIT gives you a 'better' education than going to Amherst - those schools that will instruct you in entirely different fields. In my opinion, Penn falling is great news. I think that anyone who chooses colleges based on a ranking system as skewed as this one has not done an adequate amount of homework about the colleges they apply to. I wish Penn would choose, like Reed College, to stop sending information to US News & World Report, and liberate themselves from the frivolous pressure of a faulty ranking system. Ben Franklin wouldn't have stood for it, and neither do I.

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College Board Expands Into Classroom

Posted on August 17, 2006

The College Board is slowly and steadily attempting to increase its influence in high school and even middle-school classrooms across the country. It's marketing new curriculums and opening new College Board Schools, which promise to be "centers of learning where College Board programs and services drive academic rigor." I think that College Board and AP curriculum can bring demanding standards to a classroom and improve the rigor of classwork, especially in public schools where nonstandard curriculums can't prepare kids for college. However, I do not think that expanding College Board influence is a good idea. The College Board, and ETS (the parent company), make their living by testing. Name a subject, field, value, or skill, and ETS has considered, made, or attempted to make a test for it. I don't like testing, because it takes away from class time and, as David Owen shows in his fantastic book "None of the Above: The Truth Behind the SAT," even standardized tests in areas like math aren't terribly accurate reflectors of absorption of the material. Moreover, College Board curriculum, while 'rigorous,' may not give students the best education they can get. I have long held that school isn't so much about the courses you take as it is about learning processes and skills (how to ask questions, what questions to ask, how to write well, how to think critically, etc). Most of the material learned in high school (Dante, Calculus, Chemistry, and World History) is only relevant for people entering highly specialized fields. College Board, rather than focus on learning processes, focuses instead on material. College Board wants to cram its students full of information, for them to unload it on a standardized test. I took an AP European History course, and almost the whole course was fact memorization, and short essay/document based question practice. College Board may be turning its students into good memorizers, quick test-takers, and excellent short-essay-writers, at the expense of turning them into lifelong learners. We almost never had time in European History to discuss any of the interesting topics in depth. Cramming material into students and then testing them College Board style is a sure way to bore them and leave them lacking vital skills (question-asking, actually in-depth analysis, ability to revise and write long papers, doing original research, becoming proactive), which will only harm in the future. The success of College Board schools may come down to how much College Board is willing to pay its teachers. The more College Board, and for that matter any school, is willing to pay its teachers, the better quality it will be able to attract, which transfers to its students. Students learn more from good teachers, because good teachers will engage students, find ways to make the material interesting, and leave behind valuable things like work ethic, honesty, and confidence, that stay with students far longer than the actual material. Currently, College Board pays its SAT proctors around $8-9 an hour, and as David Owen points out, gets proctors who don't report cheats and don't administer the test properly. To achieve success, it must be willing to pay its school teachers much more.

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Airport Security

Posted on August 17, 2006

John Tierney writes in the NYT about reducing wait times and improving security at airports (subscription req'd). About a security experiment in Dulles:

The screeners at Dulles stopped worrying about pen knives, shoes and laptops, allowing passengers to pass through more quickly. The speed of the line increased by nearly a third. The screening process required fewer workers, but they detected more problems because they worked smarter. Instead of looking for things, they looked at people. Borrowing techniques from Israeli airports and the U.S. Customs Service, screeners observed a passenger as he entered the airport, checked luggage and stood in line at the security checkpoint.

This is an altogether sensible policy that I hope can be adopted on a wide scale. There are two components to any successful air attack - an instrument of death and someone to use the instrument. As US security can't prevent a determined bomber from putting explosives on a plane, keeping an eye out for suspicious behaviors could be the only way to stop a terrorist at that late a stage.

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Free Box/Idea Repository – Revision

Posted on August 15, 2006

I was thinking about it some more and there's no way the original person who had the idea can get credit, because that raises intellectual property, who-was-there-first, stealing issues that I'm not planning on resolving as the web host. Credit can only be given voluntarily by whoever decides to run with the idea. I still think it's worth a shot. It combines the best of web 2.0 ideas: digg - users can digg others' ideas to make them more popular/show increased demand tags - users can tag ideas so browsers can see all ideas related to a topic. this could be useful for businesses canvassing public opinion wiki - if the originator of the idea wants, he could make it a wiki so people improve upon the idea and make it more rigorous and popular. I've seen things on the web for computer programs and other specialties. I want to cover everything under the sun. So there's my idea, the first one of the Repository.

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The Free Box

Posted on August 15, 2006

I was walking around downtown Telluride when I came across this row of boxes, just off the main street, collectively titled "The Free Box." The idea was that you can give anything or take anything away from the box for free. There were all sorts of stuff in the boxes, from clothes (divided into men's, women's, and children's) to books to old snowboard gear to a couch (didn't fit in the box, just next door). There are signs up so people don't just chuck trash or old batteries in the Free Box. So stuff no one wants doesn't accumulate, they clean out the box every two weeks. I think this is a great idea. Everyone loves getting free stuff, and this provides a place for people to give away things they don't need anymore. I was thinking about how to transfer this to the Internet. Shipping places a cost on moving free stuff, but ideas can be given and taken relatively easily. My idea would be to put up an idea repository, or free idea box, if you will. Say Stephen Levitt, the economist and author of Freakonomics, comes up with a great idea for a computer program but doesn't have the skills or the time to follow up. He posts the idea to the Idea Repository and tags it as he will. Then someone else with computer programming skill browses around, sees his idea, and decides to develop it. If it makes money, the programmer gets the biggest share, Levitt gets a cut, and the Idea Repository takes a small commission. I want to create a place, one place, to share ideas. I have ideas about grocery lines, the MLB, and the 12th amendment that I'm in no place to implement. But say others digg/share the same ideas, and someone from Safeway browses around and sees it, then my idea has power. If anyone would like to help me develop such a place, please let me know.

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The Five Groups of Question-Askers

Posted on August 13, 2006

I just got back from a question-and-answer session with Robert Baer, the ex-CIA guy who's written some books and who George Clooney's character in Syriana is loosely based upon. The question and answer session got heated at some times, irrelevant at some times, sycophantic at some times, and was overall somewhat unsatisfactory. Without further ado, the five types of people who ask questions to experts at sessions like this. #1. The lunatics. You have no hope of changing the mind of these people. They arrive with an agenda set out ahead of time, speak in loud voices to drown out dissenters, don't really ask questions, just stand up and and basically waste everyone's time. Often these people will be shocked if you ask them what they want, rather than what they object to. #2. The people who use a question as a pretext for telling a long, rambling story. These people have some special insight they want the expert to know, like the fact that their cousin was a CIA agent, or that they've been to Lebanon, or that they took a course in college by a friend of the expert, etc., and tell a long story about it, followed by such a weak question that you know they just wanted to tell the story to the expert. These people tend to think they are adding much more to the discussion than the group does. #3. The people who need their opinions confirmed. These people already know who the expert is and ask questions even though they're fully aware of the answers. They just want the expert to acknowledge and validate their belief. The questions asked by this bunch tend to be leading and weak. #4. The side-trackers. These people ask obscure, repetitive, irrelevant, uninformed, or otherwise misleading questions, akin to asking "What time do they feed the bears?" to a national park guide. These questions generally waste everyone's time. #5 The people who have relevant questions in the expert's area, who don't know the answers ahead of time, and who're generally concerned with acquiring knowledge. Sadly, a minority in the world of competitive question-asking. These questions are generally useful to the group, because the people who ask them are cognizant of the needs and knowledge of the group. If you're running a question-and-answer session, you really need some sort of question vetting system. Make everyone submit questions beforehand, or tell people why you're not going to let their question out into the group. Or, sort people before a lecture starts into these five categories and then only call on people in group five. Meetings are generally inefficient, which is why I tend not to like them. Hopefully if people recognize which of these groups they fall in, they can help meetings run more efficiently.

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New Policy

Posted on August 7, 2006

I decided this morning that from now on I'm going to discriminate against SUV's. I don't know how yet but maybe something like setting up a lemonade stand and charging Escalades and Hummers $10 for a cup.

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