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on The Role of Unions
With regard to teachers' unions:
I currently teach Computer Science at Portland Community College. In a previous life, I did research in Artificial Intelligence.
What I know from my teaching experience is that teaching is a talent-based activity. When you walk into a room where good teaching is taking place, it is (as a previous speaker on this show said) an electric experience. People are awake. They're having fun. They're participating. You can tell.
What I know from my experience in AI is that even the smartest computers are amazingly stupid when you look "behind the screen." The trick to Artificial Intelligence is that if stupid runs very quickly, it can sometimes look very smart.
There are things that only a human can do. Experiencing the feel of a classroom is one of them.
Teachers' unions want an objective process of teacher evaluation. That objective process is going to be a set of rules written down in a union contract. The problem is, you can't reduce the feel of excellent teaching to a set of objective criteria.
Once you take away the possibility of subjective evaluation, you've entered the realm of AI. You've lost the advantage of having a human in the loop. You've gone from the intelligence that humans are capable of to the catastrophically lower level that computers and bureaucratic processes are capable of.
There is no AI-like set of "objective" bureaucratic criteria that can operate at the level that humans are capable of -- not seniority, not a teacher's list of academic degrees, not anything you can write down in a union contract.
Teaching is important. Teaching takes talent. Teaching deserves to be managed at the highest level of excellence that humans are capable of. Reaching that level requires that we let humans evaluate the quality of teaching.
posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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on Staff Pick: Quarter-Life Crisis
I went to medical school after college. I went because I had no idea what to do with my life, and med school seemed like a way to keep a lot of options open.
This turned out to be a really bad idea. My real problem was the not knowing, and I should've worked on that instead of embarking on a serious career, even one "with options."
Luckily for me, I had taken a computer programming course when I was a senior in college, and was fascinated and enthralled by it. Right then, I should've dropped the med school idea and pursued a career in programming. But I didn't have it together, and went off to med school.
Two years later, it became obvious to at least a part of me that none of the "options" in medicine would fit for me. But there, out on the horizon, shining like a lighthouse, was the world of computer programming. And that lighthouse helped give me the courage to drop out of med school and pursue something I actually loved.
It wasn't easy to drop out of med school. It felt like I was losing my mind. It was a huge and painful crisis. I was 23 at the time. I hope it was a "quarter-life crisis," since 23 x 4 is 92.
I've had a great career in computer science. In a certain sense, my life began the day I walked out of med school. I think my life would've been dead and gray if I had stayed.
posted 1 year, 4 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
Some of the differences:
- intention: Terrorists intend to kill innocent victims; the Turnidges were pulling an inept extortion plot and may not have intended to kill anyone.
- scale: Jihadist Mohamed Mohamud wanted a bomb big enough to blow up an area the size of Pioneer Square and kill thousands of people. The Turnidges' bomb was small, and would not have been capable of creating mass casualties.
- ideological motive: Mohamud wanted to kill thousands of innocent people in the name of Islam. The Turnidges were acting out of a desire to extort money from a small bank.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
There are many more religious people who are "the solution" than "the problem." I think that demonizing religion is a fundamental mistake.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
OK thanks. Here's what you said about the article:
The ringleader of the 1993 WTC attack was an FBI informant named Emad Salem. He rounded up some young men from a Jersey mosque and planned the bombing. At one point he asked his FBI handlers if he could make a dud bomb. They said no, they wanted it to explode.
Here's a quote from the article you mentioned:
Federal officials have acknowledged in the past that they dropped Mr. Salem as an informer sometime before the trade center bombing over what they said was his reluctance to wear a body recorder, as well as other disagreements. They said he never provided detailed information of the attack in advance...
(My emphasis added.)
What point do you think this material makes?
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
Not enough information to find article on NYT web site. I searched the entire free database of NYT articles for October 1993 and did not find the article you mentioned. You need to provide a URL.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
The Turnidges are not the same thing as Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh's intention was to kill large numbers of people. The Turnidges' intention was to extort money from the bank. They didn't necessarily even intend for their bomb to explode.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
The most basic difference between the two cases is this:
Mohamed Mohamud intended for his large bomb to go off and kill large numbers of innocent people. His motive for this was jihad.
The Turnidges did not intend for their bomb to go off. They didn't intend to kill anyone. Their motive was to extort money from the bank.
The Turnidge case was not terrorism.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
Cascadian asks why a bomb dropped by us is different from a terrorist car bomb. The answer is, the terrorists intend to kill innocents. We, on the other hand, are aiming at the jihadist terrorists, not innocents.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
Cascadian might benefit from reading bin Laden's Fatwa Against Jews and Crusaders. In it, bin Laden states the reasons for his jihad, and they're nothing like what Cascadian says they are.
The jihadists are the ones who deserve blame for their depraved acts of terrorism, regardless of what anyone else has done. And we're drifting perilously far from the actual topic, the difference in coverage of the two events involving bombs.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
Cascadian, do you have a link to anything that would support your assertion?
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Contrasting Coverage
The differences in coverage are appropriate.
The Turnidges were lone criminals attempting to extort money from a bank. They were after money, not mass casualties. They were not motivated by a global belief systen. If their small bomb had not sadly killed two police officers, the Turnidges' claim to fame would have been multiple appearances on "dumb criminal" cable TV shows.
Mohamed Mohamud, on the other hand, wanted to kill large numbers of innocent victims with a huge bomb. Mohamud was perfectly willing to include children in the death toll. His motive for this act of terrorism was jihad.
America faces a deadly threat from jihadists. We've been under attack from the jihadists since at least 1993, when the World Trade Center in New York City was attacked for the first time. Unfortunately, America did not really wake up to this threat until the tragic events of 9/11.
Most Americans are now awake. Since 9/11 there have been a string of other jihadist attempts to wreak mayhem upon America and its allies. Most of those attempts failed, but unfortunately not all of them. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 US soldiers and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood not long ago. Jihadist attacks have caused mass casualties in London and Madrid.
Jihadism is a deadly threat against all of us, and therefore warrants the attention of all Americans. Mohamed Mohamud's attempted jihadist attack was something that all of America needed to hear about.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
And socialism works for the US Congress, Supreme Court, the Executive branch, and the US Military in Healthcare, so those are more examples of where it works and the people who participate in it like it.
You're talking about government, not socialism. Of course, any society is going to have a government. But hopefully a smart and efficient government, as big as it needs to be and no bigger, not a bloated dysfunctional bureaucracy that stifles human enterprise.
"Socialism" means the gov't in control of everything, the gov't owning everything. I saw what that was like (from afar) in the Soviet Union. No thanks.
I think we need something new and smart and American. I see signs that new ideas may be coming together. I hope so...
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
Actually Sweden and other nations have hybrid economies that include some socialism and their people say they like it and it works very well for them.
Much of Europe seems to be headed straight down the tubes. Greece, Ireland, who's next? The sustainability of their hybrid model has been called into question.
I think we need a smart new idea that isn't what we have now, and isn't Europe either. I'm not impressed with Europe, and I don't want to see the USA go down that track.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
"Hogwash," huh?
Let's see ... socialism ...
The Soviet Union - failed. Nothing in stores to buy with rubles. Black humor motto of Soviet workers: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
China - failed, has now adopted capitalism.
Cuba - failing, still driving 1950's cars, people turning trucks into boats to escape to capitalism and freedom. How many people are leaving the USA to live in Cuba? Does that difference suggest anything to you?
Where has socialism succeeded?
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
What I heard expressed throughout the show was that we need more creative and high-end people doing talented things, and that those people would form the basis of our economy. This seems like inaccurate thinking to me, something like what I see with "young creatives" moving here, all hoping to make a living selling art to each other.
There are all kinds of people. Not all of them are going to be running shoe designers or talented software engineers. I think we need to configure our economy so that it provides the kinds of jobs that are appropriate to the various kinds of people in the numbers that those types represent in our population.
I have no idea how this could be done, but it really seems like the right thing to do. I would not like to see a two-tier society where the talented rake in the bucks and everyone else scrambles for the crumbs.
On top of that, I'm absolutely opposed to anything like socialism -- it's been tried and failed enough times already.
Where does that leave me? Hoping that someone comes up with a brilliant new idea...
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Obama's Popularity
chuckyeager75 said:
That's why the Koch corporation formed the tea party.
The Tea Party is an authentic grassroots phenomenon kicked off by Rick Santelli's rant in February of 2009. To those who claim it's "astroturf" or fake or whatever, I can only quote one of my favorite political philosphers, Bob Dylan:
You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known
But something is happening here
And you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Obama's Popularity
It seems to me that Barack Obama was very talented at campaigning. And extremely good at making speeches before large, admiring audiences.
That was enough to get him elected. Governing well requires other skills, and Obama has not so far displayed similarly high levels of them.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Islam in the Northwest
Here are some books that are relevant:
What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, 2002.
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright, 2006.
It's good to understand the context from which our jihadist enemy emerges. That knowledge can help us defeat them.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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on Islam in the Northwest
DamosA said: Michael, fyi flight 93 was completely empty when it crashed into that field in PA, just so you know.
Sorry, I don't buy the various 9/11 conspiracy theories. The vast majority of the American People don't, which is to their credit.
And why would you hang up as soon as the show's host took your call?
They were having trouble with their system. It's supposed to beep and then you're on. The first two times, it beeped and then there was nothing but static. I called back each time, and the third time it worked like it was supposed to.
Anyways, good luck battling against "the eeevil jihadists"... in Tigard.
I have a Brooklyn accent, not whatever it is you're trying to evoke by the way you're spelling "eeevil."
Mohammed Mohamud came from Corvallis. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.
posted 1 year, 5 months ago
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