How much do we need?
I always get frustrated when people think that science is about knowing scientific “facts,” and not about the process.
Category Archives: Education
A Breakthrough In Cancer Detection
…from a fifteen-year old. I found this telling:
For now Andraka is going to continue promoting his breakthrough test, which he says will “completely replace the ELISA test” within a few years. He’d like to explore how to put multiple antibodies on a single test strip to check for a variety of agents in the bloodstream. And what about the rest of high school? Andraka says “hopefully” he will finish North County High School in Glenburnie, Md., but if he does form a company to commercialize the nanotube test strip, he will put high school on hold.
A young man after Peter Thiel’s heart. Some of the most talented people we have have no need for formal schooling. Speaking of which, thoughts on parents who public-school their kids.
If The Young Knew What Was Good For Them
…they’d join the Tea Party. It doesn’t help that the kleptocratic collectivists have taken over both higher and lower education.
Cal Tech Commencement Speech
…by Elon Musk, will be webcast here.
[Update at the end of the speech]
Nothing new here to people familiar with Elon. He wasn’t trying to commit any acts of news today.
The Higher-Education Bubble
Why it will be worse than the housing bubble:
Once again government has created the conditions for wholesale failure, and failure is upon us.
From 1976 to 2010, the prices of all commodities rose 280 percent. The price of homes rose 400 percent. Private education? A whopping 1,000 percent.
In the end, this bubble will be worse than the last. Even when homeowners got hopelessly behind on their mortgages, two options helped. First, they could declare bankruptcy and free themselves of their crippling debt; second, they could sell their houses to pay down most of their loans.
Students don’t have either of these options. It’s illegal to absolve student loan debt through bankruptcy, and you can’t sell back an education.
I hope that it has a disproportionate effect on the academic left. In a sane world, the first thing to go would be diversity programs, with “studies” departments hard on their heels.
The Wrong Campaign Gaffe Comparison
I have some thoughts on just how “fine” the private sector is doing under Barack Obama, over at PJMedia.
Marx’s Ghost
The specter that will not die. This is the most important election in my lifetime.
The Transit Of Venus
How to watch it this afternoon.
You know, if we were a true spacefaring civilization, we’d move the planet to get it in the same orbital plane as earth so we could do this every few months instead of once a century or so.
Not Just A Fake Indian
Apparently Lieawatha is a fake scholar, too.
Considering what a heroine Fauxcahontas is (or at least was) to the loony left, this gets more hilarious by the day.
[Update late morning]
Thoughts on Elizabeth Warren, the scholar, from Megan McArdle (who is about to move from The Atlantic to Newsweek — good for Newsweek, hopefully not bad for her):
It matters that we get this stuff right. I am among the majority who would like to see bankruptcies reduced in this country, and we’re not going to be very effective at that if we run around thinking we can cure 2/3 of them by putting a national health care system in place, when in reality a third or less have any strong causal relationship with medical bills. Obviously, this was also held out as an argument for PPACA, making an implicit promise to the American people which I believe to be false.
But it also matters because a large part of Warren’s prominence comes from the fact that she’s an academic. If she came from . . . well, the sort of think tank that publishes this sort of advocacy science . . . she would have considerably less glamor, and power.
And perhaps it mattes most of all because this woman is now under consideration to head a powerful new agency. If this is how she evaluates data, then isn’t that going to hamper her in making good policy? If we’re going to have a consumer financial protection agency, I want one that has a keen eye to the empirical evidence on consumer welfare — not one that makes progressives most happy by reinforcing their prior beliefs.
Well, we know what they want.
Britain
“…is already dead — it just hasn’t been buried yet.”