May 18, 2013
Screens save (squirrel) lives.

Screens save (squirrel) lives.

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300 billion users? Oh, huh, that’s a lot I guess?

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May 16, 2013
Well that might explain some things.

Well that might explain some things.

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csmonitor:

Common Core: Education reform’s next big thing 

Common Core standards ramp up

Common Core promises new tests. Will they be better than the old ones?

Is top ranked Massachusetts messing with education success?

Graphics: Amand Paulson/The Christian Science Monitor

I wrote about this issue for TMN back when the first batch of Common Core standards was still being developed. By now Common Core standards are being used widely in education (still mostly in math and language skills, but they are branching out to other subjects, too). My opinions haven’t changed much since writing that piece, and having worked with the standards for a couple years now, I can say unequivocally that the Common Core standards are superior to the vast majority of the state standards previously in use. However, I still maintain, as do most teachers, that high-stakes testing is not great for students, but the tests aren’t going away (because accountability).

While it’s a good thing that unified, federal standards are being applied in schools, compared to the former hodgepodge of state standards, there are still serious issues with No Child Left Behind and American education in general that need correcting (austerity programs in school budgets, most alarmingly, are just closing schools in some of our poorest cities), and the wider introduction of Common Core standards, while helpful, is no silver bullet.

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May 14, 2013
How Bing Crosby and the Nazis Helped to Create Silicon Valley
In the the mid-nineteen-forties, Americans picked over the technological remains of German industry. One discovery was magnetic tape…

Paul Ford wrote this, and the title sets it up pretty well. TMN folks are really knocking it out of the park today. We are so great.

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Train Announcements
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a passenger holding the doors of the train open, and we cannot move until the woman he is speaking to either gathers her suitcases and steps off the train with him, or convinces him that it is really over and he should just let her go. We apologize for the delay.

Also a great piece by occasional TMN contributer Bob Powers, who is also beloved.

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Everything in This City Must
After six months in Leipzig, a German reporter asks the novelist what he’ll miss. But it’s back here in the United States where more dangerous questions take shape, none easily answered with good beer.

Great piece today by our beloved Alexander Chee.

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Fire alarm went off about an hour ago. Woke me up, which is good I guess. No fire, but now I can’t get back to sleep. Stupid fire alarm.

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May 10, 2013
While I sincerely wish I were seeing Kate Beaton’s Great Gatsby tonight, I’m instead seeing Baz Luhrmann’s. Since there’s little hope of him not screwing it up somehow, I hope he decides to just run with that and screw it up magnificently. I hope it makes the idle rich sympathetic, vanity a virtue, and that Gatsby and Daisy end up together and live happily ever after. I’ll let you know.

While I sincerely wish I were seeing Kate Beaton’s Great Gatsby tonight, I’m instead seeing Baz Luhrmann’s. Since there’s little hope of him not screwing it up somehow, I hope he decides to just run with that and screw it up magnificently. I hope it makes the idle rich sympathetic, vanity a virtue, and that Gatsby and Daisy end up together and live happily ever after.

I’ll let you know.

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May 9, 2013

I actively avoid any and all information that might lead me to believe Daft Punk is comprised of two French dudes and not two actual robots.

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