I've written three books for traditional publishers and that process was pretty straight-forward, although one loses a lot of control once the manuscript is submitted. So I decided I wanted to learn how to write and publish an ebook. I thought that would give me the control over not only content, but also look and feel. I picked Amazon because it's the largest retailer out there and because their system seemed pretty simple to understand.
It turns out that writing a Kindle book is pretty easy. Basically you write your book in Microsoft Word (or one of the clones) and then upload it to the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system where it is formatted for e-readers. You get to review your book and make as many changes (and new uploads) as you like before you hit the "Publish" button. But - and there's always a but - it's not quite that loosey-goosey.
First you have to create a KDP account, including giving Amazon your bank information so they can deposit your royalties. You also need to decide on which royalty type (35% or 70%) you are going to use. While 70% sounds attractive, there are a number of restrictions that will push most people (including me) to the 35% level.
Once you've created your KDP account you can write your book. Beware of the Amazon support pages. It appears that they've not been updated for several years. For example, several of the pages assume the only type of file you can upload is "edited HTML", which is now incorrect. You can directly upload an MS Word file. Before you begin writing you should create a template for your book in MS Word. Amazon has guidelines for that and it's really important that you follow their guidelines and format your book properly. The template is essential for margins, paragraph formats, fonts, and the table of contents. Also make sure that you use sections to separate the front matter from the body of the text.
One problem I had was with monospaced fonts. The documentation leads you to believe that you should limit the number of different fonts you use and that you should use "common" fonts, but that multiple fonts are allowable in your manuscript. That was not my experience. My book had a number of cryptograms in it that required that the letters on different lines to line up. This is, of course, problematic in a variable-spaced font like Times New Roman. So, believing the Amazon support pages, I used Courier for my cryptograms. Did. not. work. The first time I uploaded my manuscript and received back the review file the entire book was in a single variable-spaced font; all my cryptograms were wrong.
Several hours in the Amazon KDP community forums convinced my that there was no way for me to include the monospaced font in my manuscript. So my solution (and it's not great) was to embed all my cryptograms in tables and make the tables as narrow as possible (also not an easy task). That made things look pretty good and the cryptograms lined up properly.
Other miscellaneous weirdnesses cropped up. All your chapter titles should be Heading 1 types so the Table of Contents works correctly. Despite what the Amazon guidelines said, I never got my table of contents entries to be live links to the proper pages within the ebook. There is some Kindle magic I'm missing here. Also, don't do page numbers and make sure that you turn off including page numbers in your Table of Contents. Ebooks will get re-formatted and ebook readers don't do page numbers so they're useless and confusing to the user.
The cover was another area of confusion. You must create a cover for a Kindle ebook and the cover must be an image of some kind. Thankfully, Amazon has a Cover Creator app that you can use and has a dozen or so themes you can work around. You can also upload your own cover image. Beware, though and don't include the author and title there because the Cover Creator will also include them. I am not a designer, so using Cover Creator was very helpful for me, although the next time I may find a graphic designer to work with instead.
Other than that, the rest of the process was pretty simple. When you're ready you upload your manuscript, Amazon converts it into a Kindle ebook, you review the converted file, make any changes you need to (and re-submit and re-review), and when you're happy hit Save and Publish and you're done. Amazon's conversion program will check for spelling and formatting errors it can't fix and let you know. For my book I kept finding minor typographic and syntactic errors so I ended up submitting the book half a dozen times. Once you decide to publish though, Amazon will have your book up for sale within a day (I never waited more than a few hours).
Overall, creating an ebook was a pretty easy and pleasurable experience. Enjoy!
Monday, August 1, 2016
Monday, July 30, 2012
Your Vote Doesn't Count
That's right, in the U.S. presidential election your vote doesn't count.
Say you live in Illinois and you're a Republican; your vote doesn't count. Illinois is a reliably "blue" state and will go for Obama this year. That isn't why your vote doesn't count, though. It's because under the electoral system as implemented, Illinois is a winner-take-all state for electors. So as long as one more Democrat votes for Obama than all the Republicans, ALL of Illinois' electors go for Obama. Same thing if you're a Republican in California, New York, or Massachusetts - your vote doesn't count.
Similarly, if you're a Democrat in Oklahoma (there are some, right?) your vote doesn't count. Oklahoma is the reddest state in the nation so it's even better; if you're a Democrat in Oklahoma your vote will NEVER count. At least not as long as Oklahoma continues with its winner-take-all-the-electors system. Same thing in Kansas, Alabama, Utah, and Mississippi, to name a few.
So where would your vote count? Well, hardly anywhere. Only two states - Nebraska and Maine - have systems that allocate electors based on Congressional districts. So in those states, you only have to be in a congressional district that goes Democratic for your vote for Obama to count. Easy, and fair, right? Nope. It turns out that about 80%+ of all congressional seats are "safe" seats and their representatives get re-elected time after time. So if you are a Democrat in a safe Republican district, your vote doesn't count. Of the other 20% about half (10% of total) are really contested elections (that's 44 seats every two years) and the last 10% is seats of retiring members that are really safe anyway. You're screwed.
It doesn't have to be this way. While the electoral system is in the U.S. Constitution, HOW it's implemented and how the electors are selected is left up to the states. So they could change. But the flaw isn't only in the implementation, it's in the electoral system itself. The electoral system was set up because, frankly, the Founding Fathers didn't trust us to elect the President. They wanted a buffer between the masses and those more suited to government, so that the folks in power would choose the President. It's time to change.
The President and the Vice-President are the only two Constitutionally defined officers who are supposed to represent the ENTIRE country. They don't represent districts and they don't represent states, they represent the COUNTRY. So they should be elected by the ENTIRE COUNTRY by having the election for President and Vice-President be a direct election. Everybody votes, every vote is counted. The candidate pair with the plurality of votes are elected. Done. Simple to implement, simple to run, simple to count.
Now those of you in states with small populations will start to shriek that you're being left out. And you're right. But that's because you're populations are small, you should have less say than the larger states. Suck it up. You already have a disproportionate share of power by having two U.S. Senators. You don't get any more power. The Republicans of California want their say and the Democrats in Oklahoma want their say.
Repeal the electoral system and implement direct election of the President - NOW!
Say you live in Illinois and you're a Republican; your vote doesn't count. Illinois is a reliably "blue" state and will go for Obama this year. That isn't why your vote doesn't count, though. It's because under the electoral system as implemented, Illinois is a winner-take-all state for electors. So as long as one more Democrat votes for Obama than all the Republicans, ALL of Illinois' electors go for Obama. Same thing if you're a Republican in California, New York, or Massachusetts - your vote doesn't count.
Similarly, if you're a Democrat in Oklahoma (there are some, right?) your vote doesn't count. Oklahoma is the reddest state in the nation so it's even better; if you're a Democrat in Oklahoma your vote will NEVER count. At least not as long as Oklahoma continues with its winner-take-all-the-electors system. Same thing in Kansas, Alabama, Utah, and Mississippi, to name a few.
So where would your vote count? Well, hardly anywhere. Only two states - Nebraska and Maine - have systems that allocate electors based on Congressional districts. So in those states, you only have to be in a congressional district that goes Democratic for your vote for Obama to count. Easy, and fair, right? Nope. It turns out that about 80%+ of all congressional seats are "safe" seats and their representatives get re-elected time after time. So if you are a Democrat in a safe Republican district, your vote doesn't count. Of the other 20% about half (10% of total) are really contested elections (that's 44 seats every two years) and the last 10% is seats of retiring members that are really safe anyway. You're screwed.
It doesn't have to be this way. While the electoral system is in the U.S. Constitution, HOW it's implemented and how the electors are selected is left up to the states. So they could change. But the flaw isn't only in the implementation, it's in the electoral system itself. The electoral system was set up because, frankly, the Founding Fathers didn't trust us to elect the President. They wanted a buffer between the masses and those more suited to government, so that the folks in power would choose the President. It's time to change.
The President and the Vice-President are the only two Constitutionally defined officers who are supposed to represent the ENTIRE country. They don't represent districts and they don't represent states, they represent the COUNTRY. So they should be elected by the ENTIRE COUNTRY by having the election for President and Vice-President be a direct election. Everybody votes, every vote is counted. The candidate pair with the plurality of votes are elected. Done. Simple to implement, simple to run, simple to count.
Now those of you in states with small populations will start to shriek that you're being left out. And you're right. But that's because you're populations are small, you should have less say than the larger states. Suck it up. You already have a disproportionate share of power by having two U.S. Senators. You don't get any more power. The Republicans of California want their say and the Democrats in Oklahoma want their say.
Repeal the electoral system and implement direct election of the President - NOW!
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Loooong! Sorry about that...
A friend's comment that he doesn't know anything about college or university economics prompted me to explain where all our student's money goes here at Knox...
First, I don't know anything about large public research universities; mostly they emphasize the research and they exist to get grant monies. At least if you are a faculty member that seems to be your main job. For many of the large public universities undergraduate education is the burden they have to carry to do research. That said, public universities have been caught between a rock and a hard place in recent years because the states that support them have been reducing the fraction of their budgets that are supplied by the state. The only way for the public universities to make up the shortfall is to raise tuition. The state of Illinois has slashed their support for the U of I system by about 35% over the last few years, so U of I has raised tuition.
I work at a small liberal arts college. I've been the faculty observer to the Board of Trustees for the last four years and I'm currently the chair of the Faculty budget committee, so I've got a pretty good clue at least into Knox's budget. It ain't pretty.
We are a heavily tuition-driven institution. Why? because our endowment is too small - about $85M. We're in a consortium of 14 similarly sized liberal arts colleges called the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. The top endowed colleges in our consortium all have huge endowments - for example, Grinnell College's endowment is about $1.3 BILLION.
Several other schools in the consortium have endowments that are north of $500M. Suffice it to say they are not as heavily tuition driven as we are. (BTW, despite the sentences above, Grinnell charges more for tuition than Knox by several thousand dollars. Go figure.) When you look at faculty salaries for the consortium, at all four grade levels (Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Prof. and Professor) Knox ranks either 12th, 13th, or 14th out of 14. So we're not rich. Out of our $40M annual budget, the endowment contributes just about 10%. Nearly all the rest is from tuition.
When you think about Knox's $40M operating budget for about 1400 students, think of it this way. We run a town of about 1800 people.
We occupy about 20 square blocks of Galesburg. We have about 60 buildings ranging in size from a 1200 sq ft. bungalow (the Alumni Affairs office) to the 80,000 sq. ft. Science Building. The oldest of our buildings was built in 1857, the newest in 1996.
All those buildings need electricity, water, sewage, HVAC, etc. All those buildings need roofs, windows, tuckpointing, foundation work, sump pumps, etc. We have to abide by rules that normal towns and individuals in their houses don't need to. For example, the State of Illinois in 2008 mandated that all residential and classroom buildings on college campuses (public and private) must have modern sprinkler systems by 2013. So we've had to spend about $5M to install sprinklers around campus over the last few years (we already had smoke detectors and fire alarms in all buildings).
We have roads, sidewalks, storm sewers, landscaping, etc. We have a football field, a practice field, a track, a soccer field, a baseball field and a softball field and 2 tennis courts. All of which need maintenance.
We have a telephone system, a computer network that accommodates about 2000 computers, office machines, and a satellite TV system.
We have a security force of about 8 that works 24 hours a day.
Of the 1800 people in our little town, we have to feed about 1400 of them three meals a day, seven-days a week. (Don't get me started on variety of meals, local vs trucked-in food, sustainability, vegetarians, vegans, etc.) Nearly all of our students live on campus.
We have a health center with one full-time professional and a full-time and 2 part-time mental health professionals on staff.
We have 350 or so staff, of whom 100 are faculty. They all get salaries and benefits - and they all contribute to both retirement and health care (I pay $479/month for the family plan health insurance; thankfully because of the Affordable Care Act we can keep Patrick on our insurance until he's 26. That is only 1/3 the total cost of the health insurance; the College pays the other 2/3 of the monthly cost. We are self-insured, but we contract with a service in Chicago to manage the plan. It's cheaper than going with one of the large insurance companies.) We have very few adjuncts and we're proud of that; nearly all of our courses are taught by full-time faculty.
Some disciplines on campus don't have large expenses (hey, what do you need for Classics? ;^). In computer science our biggest expense is for (duh) computers. Luckily, we spend practically $0 on software every year because we're very aggressive about using open source software for nearly all our classes. We also spend $800 per year to belong to the Microsoft Academic Alliance which gives us free copies of MS Visual Studio for all our students when we use it in a class (not often, but occasionally). We keep our lab computers for 3 or 4 years before we replace them. Our old computers go to staff members for their office machines. I do have complaints - we don't have money for mobile devices or robots that we'd love to use in several of our classes. We make do with free emulators instead.
In CS our biggest expense (aside from salaries) is the library - As a senior member of the IEEE (one of CSs professional societies) I personally pay about $125 a year for electronic access to ALL the IEEE journals (about 50 journals and conference proceedings). The Knox library - for five (5) IEEE journals, pays over $5,000 per year - for electronic access; we don't get printed journals anymore. If it weren't for inter-library loan (for which we also pay) my students wouldn't have access to lots of journals and conference proceedings.
Knox starts every fiscal year with a deficit. This year it was $3.6M. The goal over the year is to eliminate the deficit and break even by the following June 30. (Sorry, we're not a for-profit college.) My departmental budget has not gone up in 11 years.
As I've said before, one of Knox's primary missions is to serve first-generation and low income students. Our discount rate is 48% this year, so the $32K tuition is really about $17K for many students. Our tuition has increased about 3-4% per year over the last decade. Our room fees have only recently gone up about 5% after being held flat for about 6 years and board goes up to match projected food costs. Room and board are supposed to break-even, and not be cash cows. Our students leave Knox with an average debt of about $23,000. Not great, but manageable IMHO.
About 50% of our students have an off-campus study experience. Some in the U.S. and many of them abroad. There are no extra fees for study-abroad at Knox except for airfare to get you there and home. Your regular Knox tuition (including all your financial aid) pays for the study-abroad program. Study-abroad students typically get a break on room and board while they are overseas. This costs Knox money, but is usually a terrific experience for the students.
Our Board has done a very good job of managing and increasing the endowment over the past decade. The endowment has more than doubled in that time and we've been able to ratchet down an unsustainable yearly draw of 16% in 1999 to a sustainable 5% draw from the endowment/income this year. Still, that won't get us rapidly to the $300M or so endowment we really need to be able to breathe easily and start each year with a balanced budget.
I'm really not whining here. I really love it here; I've got some great students and some good students. I've got interesting colleagues. I love my work; while I work 50-70 hours a week during the school year, I get to make my own hours and do research during the summer. We've got a great, energetic new president (our first female president) and there's a lot of hope floating around campus. Our students do very well nationally and, at least in computer science, they all either have jobs or are in grad school. Given our very limited resources, I think we have a very good CS program here and we compare very favorably with lots of liberal arts colleges with a lot more money. Just don't call us greedy or inefficient.
I think that over the last 40 years, the education "business" has swung from a system where there were more scholarships and grants and government money available for both colleges and for individual students to a system where you're basically on your own. Where there is less government funding available for everyone and more dependence on borrowing for education. Republicans would call it "individual accountability". I call it a shame.
My $.02.
cheers,
john
Re: For Profit Universities...
So I can't help but point out some more things...(sorry about being late to the party, I was doing grading for my non-online courses ;^)
So I can't help but point out some more things...(sorry about being late to the party, I was doing grading for my non-online courses ;^)
1. Thrun is running a for-profit outfit now. He's in it for the money (sad because he did such a good job with Stanford's robotics program)
2. In my opinion/experience, for-profit "universities" generally don't give a rats ass if you learn anything or if you graduate. They, like all for-profit entities, are out to satisfy their shareholders/investors, not do good. (Nope, not even Google, despite their motto) That's why outfits like the University of Phoenix have students with extremely high default rates on student loans.
3. If you look at the numbers from the article, we get...
Stanford AI course - 160,000 enrolled, 23,000 finished (that's only 14.375% - or an attrition rate of 85+%), and 248 or 1% of those who completed the course got 100%.
Machine Learning - 13,000 out of 104,000 completed or 12.5% completed, an 87.5% attrition rate.
Databases - 7,000 out of 92,000 completed or 7.6%. a 92.4% attrition rate.
If I had attrition numbers like that in my courses I'd be out of a job pretty quickly.
4. As a liberal arts professor I have to make the argument that this type of transfer of knowledge is not education but training. Evans from Virginia (another sad story as he's got a really nice textbook on security out) says as much. Training has its place, but sorry, it doesn't make you better able to cope as the world changes around you. (IMHO).
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Libertarianism and you
(As usual, the opinions expressed here are mine, I don't claim in this post to have any scientific data to back up my opinions - they're opinions. So don't bother yelling at me.)
Libertarianism
There's been a discussion on an email list I'm on about the demonstration in Washington last week by the "Tea Party" folks. During the course of that discussion one of my friends said
"If I had to label myself, I guess I would be a Libertarian; I want the government to get the hell out of my life and my pocketbook. Everything the government runs turns to crap; they accomplish so little with such amazing expenditures of our cash. It is close to being a true inverse relationship (there’s a piled higher and deeper thesis for you); the more it costs, the less effective it is."
That got me to thinking again about Libertarians, what they believe, and why. I'm a liberal, I've always been a liberal, I'm pretty sure I always will be, although I do get conflicted about certain things. I just don't get conservative ideology (more on that later). Libertarians are odd ducks, though, because while it would seem they normally would line up with conservative Republicans, they've also got this government is bad no matter what thing going on that is interesting.
According to Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge these days) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism, "Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state....The best or most commonly known formulation of libertarianism supports free market capitalism by advocating a right to private property, including property in the means of production, minimal government regulation of that property, minimal taxation, and rejection of the welfare state, all within the context of the rule of law."
My initial response to this is "why that is so 18th century!" Here's why I think so. The second sentence in the definition above seems to sound a lot like various things said just before and after the American Revolution. The values expressed, IMHO, may have worked and the consequent policies may have worked when the population of the USA was 3 million and largely rural, say in 1789.
But by the time the population got to first 50 million (roughly 1880) and then 100 million (roughly 1914) and was a mix of rural and urban, most of this stuff (again IMHO) didn't work. And now, at 300+ million and overwhelmingly urban (81%+), those values and policies don't work at all for the plain and simple reason that with that many people there are many more predators around and many more people likely to be victims. Of course, if you don't believe in helping your fellow man, this is not an issue.
I heard a great quote on NPR this morning during a report on the economy and on regulating the financial system. It went something like this - if you have a system that allows cheating and theft, people will cheat and steal. So I think that given the size of the country, the size of the economy, and the opportunity for cheating and stealing, that more regulation (and hence more government) is called for. I think that unregulated free market capitalism is evil because it allows the predators to do what they will, at the expense of everyone else (thank you Bernie Madoff). I also think that capitalism is the most viable economic system, it just needs to be regulated and the regulations need to have teeth. (The Soviets showed that having the government own everything and eliminating all competition is just a bad idea.)
One of the other things that Libertarians rail against is the federal government, but many of them seem to think that state governments are not so bad. Pshaw.
IMHO states are just a bad idea. They're yet another holdover (like the electoral college) from the initial competition between the 13 colonies as they emerged into independence (there's that 18th century idea thing again). The only thing states should be used for is to determine the number of Senators - a balance in the legislative branch I like. How often has the federal government had to send in troops or go to court to reverse some egregious action by a state? Think segregation, please.
Libertarianism also seems to be a bastion of the idea that everyone is basically on their own, and that they are not obligated to be their brother's keeper. The health care debate is just the latest in a long list of examples of this moral value (or lack thereof, IMHO). One of the most striking comments I've heard came from a self-professed conservative Republican at our Congressman's local town hall meeting this summer (Hare, D-IL 17). A woman who was enrolled in the Medicare system thought that universal health care (of which she was a beneficiary - but the irony did not strike her) was immoral because "we paid into this all our lives and we shouldn't have to support anybody else." (a paraphrase, but it stayed with me)
Aside from fundamentally not understanding how Medicare works, she was espousing the "I'm in it for me and nobody else" philosophy that seems to run through right-wing Republicans and Libertarians these days.
Oh, and the canard that the federal government is wasteful. Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes so are unregulated corporations (anyone want to go on an AIG junket???). And sometimes the government is _more_ efficient. A recent GAO report says that the cost of a stay in a VA facility (a real socialist medical program because the government is not only a single payer, but they own the hospitals and employ the doctors) is 2/3 the cost of a stay for someone with private insurance in a private hospital. And the veterans are happy with their care - overwhelmingly. And they don't have any co-pays and their insurance won't get canceled when they get sick.
So, overall, I think Libertarianism is an idea whose time has come and gone. It can't survive in a country of this size that is mostly urban; it's ideas just don't make sense to me in that context.
Libertarianism
There's been a discussion on an email list I'm on about the demonstration in Washington last week by the "Tea Party" folks. During the course of that discussion one of my friends said
"If I had to label myself, I guess I would be a Libertarian; I want the government to get the hell out of my life and my pocketbook. Everything the government runs turns to crap; they accomplish so little with such amazing expenditures of our cash. It is close to being a true inverse relationship (there’s a piled higher and deeper thesis for you); the more it costs, the less effective it is."
That got me to thinking again about Libertarians, what they believe, and why. I'm a liberal, I've always been a liberal, I'm pretty sure I always will be, although I do get conflicted about certain things. I just don't get conservative ideology (more on that later). Libertarians are odd ducks, though, because while it would seem they normally would line up with conservative Republicans, they've also got this government is bad no matter what thing going on that is interesting.
According to Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge these days) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism, "Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state....The best or most commonly known formulation of libertarianism supports free market capitalism by advocating a right to private property, including property in the means of production, minimal government regulation of that property, minimal taxation, and rejection of the welfare state, all within the context of the rule of law."
My initial response to this is "why that is so 18th century!" Here's why I think so. The second sentence in the definition above seems to sound a lot like various things said just before and after the American Revolution. The values expressed, IMHO, may have worked and the consequent policies may have worked when the population of the USA was 3 million and largely rural, say in 1789.
But by the time the population got to first 50 million (roughly 1880) and then 100 million (roughly 1914) and was a mix of rural and urban, most of this stuff (again IMHO) didn't work. And now, at 300+ million and overwhelmingly urban (81%+), those values and policies don't work at all for the plain and simple reason that with that many people there are many more predators around and many more people likely to be victims. Of course, if you don't believe in helping your fellow man, this is not an issue.
I heard a great quote on NPR this morning during a report on the economy and on regulating the financial system. It went something like this - if you have a system that allows cheating and theft, people will cheat and steal. So I think that given the size of the country, the size of the economy, and the opportunity for cheating and stealing, that more regulation (and hence more government) is called for. I think that unregulated free market capitalism is evil because it allows the predators to do what they will, at the expense of everyone else (thank you Bernie Madoff). I also think that capitalism is the most viable economic system, it just needs to be regulated and the regulations need to have teeth. (The Soviets showed that having the government own everything and eliminating all competition is just a bad idea.)
One of the other things that Libertarians rail against is the federal government, but many of them seem to think that state governments are not so bad. Pshaw.
IMHO states are just a bad idea. They're yet another holdover (like the electoral college) from the initial competition between the 13 colonies as they emerged into independence (there's that 18th century idea thing again). The only thing states should be used for is to determine the number of Senators - a balance in the legislative branch I like. How often has the federal government had to send in troops or go to court to reverse some egregious action by a state? Think segregation, please.
Libertarianism also seems to be a bastion of the idea that everyone is basically on their own, and that they are not obligated to be their brother's keeper. The health care debate is just the latest in a long list of examples of this moral value (or lack thereof, IMHO). One of the most striking comments I've heard came from a self-professed conservative Republican at our Congressman's local town hall meeting this summer (Hare, D-IL 17). A woman who was enrolled in the Medicare system thought that universal health care (of which she was a beneficiary - but the irony did not strike her) was immoral because "we paid into this all our lives and we shouldn't have to support anybody else." (a paraphrase, but it stayed with me)
Aside from fundamentally not understanding how Medicare works, she was espousing the "I'm in it for me and nobody else" philosophy that seems to run through right-wing Republicans and Libertarians these days.
Oh, and the canard that the federal government is wasteful. Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes so are unregulated corporations (anyone want to go on an AIG junket???). And sometimes the government is _more_ efficient. A recent GAO report says that the cost of a stay in a VA facility (a real socialist medical program because the government is not only a single payer, but they own the hospitals and employ the doctors) is 2/3 the cost of a stay for someone with private insurance in a private hospital. And the veterans are happy with their care - overwhelmingly. And they don't have any co-pays and their insurance won't get canceled when they get sick.
So, overall, I think Libertarianism is an idea whose time has come and gone. It can't survive in a country of this size that is mostly urban; it's ideas just don't make sense to me in that context.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
News and What I (mostly) listen to and why...
Been having a discussion with some friends about network news, reporters, and news shows. My latest thoughts (at 4:00 AM when I coulnd't go back to sleep).
First, I'm pretty close to being a news junkie. I read my local newspaper every day, I read Newsweek every week, I wake up to Morning Edition every weekday and drive home to All Things Considered every evening. During the day I'll find 10 minutes or so to browse cnn.com and nytimes.com. And this doesn't include the 5 - 10 geek web sites I look at pretty much every day and the computer news emails I get every day from the two professional organizations to which I belong. (it is my job, after all.)
But I hardly ever watch TV news and when I do, it is almost always PBS. Every few months I'll tune into one of the major network broadcasts but I'm always disappointed so I don't go back.
Why am I disappointed? Two reasons, I think. First, story selection. Most of the time the selection of stories and their ordering in the network newscast just turns me off. Really, has anyone counted how many times the network news led with a Michael Jackson story this summer? This, I think, is what other folks mean by dumbing down the news. Second, is story length. I'm sure that there are probably terrific field reporters for all the networks but I'll never know that because either their stories don't make it on the air or they are reduced to one minute sound bites. I realize both of these things are driven by network management and the fact that now networks are trying to make a profit from their news organizations, but it doesn't make me want to watch.
I listen to NPR _because_ of the story lengths. Yes, they can get sucked into stupid story sequences (they did too many Michael Jackson stories this summer as well), but generally the longer stories I get to listen to are wonderfully informative. It must be at least once a week that I end up sitting in my garage for 5 minutes or more so I can finish listening to a story on ATC. And because Morning Edition is 1 1/2 hours long and ATC is 2 hours long, they get to report a lot of stuff - stuff I might not hear or see on a network 23 minute broadcast. Neither NPR nor PBS is perfect, but neither am I, just ask my students or my wife.
And, frankly I don't have the time. I listen to the radio a lot because I can do other stuff while I'm listening. And at my age I've given myself permission not to care about some things, and I don't care about TV news anymore (well, except for the Daily Show, but that doesn't really count as news, does it?). I've got too many other things to do than have to sit and watch talking heads babble. And if that makes me a snob, so be it.
Finally, I like to think that all worlds are real. I live in one.
First, I'm pretty close to being a news junkie. I read my local newspaper every day, I read Newsweek every week, I wake up to Morning Edition every weekday and drive home to All Things Considered every evening. During the day I'll find 10 minutes or so to browse cnn.com and nytimes.com. And this doesn't include the 5 - 10 geek web sites I look at pretty much every day and the computer news emails I get every day from the two professional organizations to which I belong. (it is my job, after all.)
But I hardly ever watch TV news and when I do, it is almost always PBS. Every few months I'll tune into one of the major network broadcasts but I'm always disappointed so I don't go back.
Why am I disappointed? Two reasons, I think. First, story selection. Most of the time the selection of stories and their ordering in the network newscast just turns me off. Really, has anyone counted how many times the network news led with a Michael Jackson story this summer? This, I think, is what other folks mean by dumbing down the news. Second, is story length. I'm sure that there are probably terrific field reporters for all the networks but I'll never know that because either their stories don't make it on the air or they are reduced to one minute sound bites. I realize both of these things are driven by network management and the fact that now networks are trying to make a profit from their news organizations, but it doesn't make me want to watch.
I listen to NPR _because_ of the story lengths. Yes, they can get sucked into stupid story sequences (they did too many Michael Jackson stories this summer as well), but generally the longer stories I get to listen to are wonderfully informative. It must be at least once a week that I end up sitting in my garage for 5 minutes or more so I can finish listening to a story on ATC. And because Morning Edition is 1 1/2 hours long and ATC is 2 hours long, they get to report a lot of stuff - stuff I might not hear or see on a network 23 minute broadcast. Neither NPR nor PBS is perfect, but neither am I, just ask my students or my wife.
And, frankly I don't have the time. I listen to the radio a lot because I can do other stuff while I'm listening. And at my age I've given myself permission not to care about some things, and I don't care about TV news anymore (well, except for the Daily Show, but that doesn't really count as news, does it?). I've got too many other things to do than have to sit and watch talking heads babble. And if that makes me a snob, so be it.
Finally, I like to think that all worlds are real. I live in one.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Liberal Education bad?
A friend of mine pointed me to an article in the NY Times. It in turn references a "report" from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/
My response:
First of all, I want to note that the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni (ACTA) is a very conservative group that advocates for
"academic freedom" in the same way that David Horowitz of Academic
Bill of Rights fame does. (Their premise is American colleges and
universities are controlled by the liberal elite who are brainwashing
our children and stifling any other type of discussion. In addition,
these liberals have crushed the Western tradition of education and
doomed our children to be ignorant yoyos who will all be working for
Indian and Chinese immigrants.) The president of the ACTA has written
extensively on the demise of American higher ed and the Board of the
ACTA includes Ed Meese (yes, that Ed Meese), and guys from the conservative
Hudson Institute think tank and the equally conservative National
Association of Scholars. (Ya gotta love these names. ;^)
So take the "What Will They Learn?" report with the normal ton or two
of salt.
That being said, I'm certainly in sympathy with a good general
education curriculum. Unfortunately, I think their report is looking
for ways to place lots of very good schools in a very bad light.
Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Cornell, Haverford, Grinnell, Oberlin, Smith,
Wash U, Williams all get an F on their scale??? Give me a major break.
What happens in their report is that they present a seemingly
reasonable set of gen ed requirements (a math course, an econ course,
a foreign language requirement, a composition course, etc) and then
apply the standard so rigidly that practically none of the schools can
pass.
For example (quoted from the report itself):
Bowdoin College: No credit given for Composition because the First-Year
Seminars do not focus exclusively on writing.
University of California-Berkeley: No credit given for Foreign
Language because only second-semester competency is required.
Carleton College: No credit given for Mathematics or Natural or Physical
Science because the two subjects are folded into the Mathematics and
Natural Sciences requirement.
University of Chicago: No credit given for Foreign Language because only
one year at the college level is required. No credit given for U.S.
Government or History because the Civilization Studies sequences are not necessarily
focused on American history.
It goes on. These folks were actively looking for ways to say "fail!"
So, moving on. I'll work with some categories a friend of mine came up with and tell you about Knox.
First of all my friend was talking about a public university with an open
admission policy. Knox is private and calls itself "highly selective".
So there's likely a big difference in the pool of students we're
looking at. At Knox our average ACT score for entering classes the
last few years has been either 27 or 28, depending on the year (take
ACT scores with a pound of salt as well.) About 25% of our students
are first-generation college students, and more than 85% of our
students get some form of financial aid. We have 11% international
students (mostly South and East Asian) and are about 25% students of
color. About 45% of our students come from Illinois.
Literacy and numeracy: I'd say our students generally have decent
writing skills. All our first-year students take a Preceptorial course
which is writing intensive. It includes several weeks of writing
instruction, but isn't really a composition course. It's taught by
faculty from all across campus - I've taught it once. Faculty are
given some instruction in teaching writing, but mostly we're on our
own. Our students also must take two more writing-intensive courses
during their tenure at Knox, one of which must be in their major. Most
take more. My CS majors learn technical writing mostly from me in an
upper-level course that's required of all majors. I'd say they end up
definitely on a bell curve there in terms of quality of writing.
Numeracy quite a different story. Our students are supposed to show
Quantitative proficiency (usually through their ACT score) and
Quantitative Literacy (QL) by taking a course labeled QL. All Math
courses are labeled QL, as are a few other courses - one CS course, a
general Stats course, Chemistry I, 3 Econ courses, and most Physics
courses. Our students try to avoid the Math courses like the plague
and when forced to take one, will generally take the lowest possible
Math course (our two biggest majors are Engish Lit and Creative
Writing - mostly they don't see the use). The Stats course is very
popular as long as one of the Math profs isn't teaching it.
We have one Math course considered to be remediary and our Center for
Teaching and Learning (aka the Writing center) also offers a remedial
math course.
Logic and rhetoric: Can't say that our students are particularly
strong on logic, but for rhetoric, the writing requirement in the
major helps.
Travel experiences: About 1/2 of our students have some sort of
overseas experience. Many of them for one, two, or three terms (three
terms is one academic year for us), some for as short as a week or
two. We have three overseas centers (France, Spain, & Argentina) and
except for the plane fare, the overseas terms at our centers cost just
what a term on campus does.
Critical thinking: Ah well, learning to distinguish between belief
and fact, having informed opinions. Well, these are 18 - 22 year olds
after all. Lots of things are still very black and white to them, and
they have ideas I consider strange. In several of my CS classes we
talk about topics considered to be "computer ethics", "professional
practice", "impact of technology on society", privacy, etc. These are
all very interesting discussions. They don't tend to believe in
copyright or intellectual property rights at all (gee, what a
surprise), but they also can't really articulate why their belief
might be right or wrong. With ethical case studies related to the
profession, they tend to always want to do the right thing, but they
also are still pretty self-centered. They tend to be very
compassionate and righteous about discrimination, but as I said, it's
still pretty black and white for them, not much of a middle ground. I
love playing the devil's advocate in these discussions.
Oh, and the final word - they all think they know way more than they
really do, and we do a terrible job of convincing them that this
broad, general education thingie is really worthwhile.
cheers,
john
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/
My response:
First of all, I want to note that the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni (ACTA) is a very conservative group that advocates for
"academic freedom" in the same way that David Horowitz of Academic
Bill of Rights fame does. (Their premise is American colleges and
universities are controlled by the liberal elite who are brainwashing
our children and stifling any other type of discussion. In addition,
these liberals have crushed the Western tradition of education and
doomed our children to be ignorant yoyos who will all be working for
Indian and Chinese immigrants.) The president of the ACTA has written
extensively on the demise of American higher ed and the Board of the
ACTA includes Ed Meese (yes, that Ed Meese), and guys from the conservative
Hudson Institute think tank and the equally conservative National
Association of Scholars. (Ya gotta love these names. ;^)
So take the "What Will They Learn?" report with the normal ton or two
of salt.
That being said, I'm certainly in sympathy with a good general
education curriculum. Unfortunately, I think their report is looking
for ways to place lots of very good schools in a very bad light.
Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Cornell, Haverford, Grinnell, Oberlin, Smith,
Wash U, Williams all get an F on their scale??? Give me a major break.
What happens in their report is that they present a seemingly
reasonable set of gen ed requirements (a math course, an econ course,
a foreign language requirement, a composition course, etc) and then
apply the standard so rigidly that practically none of the schools can
pass.
For example (quoted from the report itself):
Bowdoin College: No credit given for Composition because the First-Year
Seminars do not focus exclusively on writing.
University of California-Berkeley: No credit given for Foreign
Language because only second-semester competency is required.
Carleton College: No credit given for Mathematics or Natural or Physical
Science because the two subjects are folded into the Mathematics and
Natural Sciences requirement.
University of Chicago: No credit given for Foreign Language because only
one year at the college level is required. No credit given for U.S.
Government or History because the Civilization Studies sequences are not necessarily
focused on American history.
It goes on. These folks were actively looking for ways to say "fail!"
So, moving on. I'll work with some categories a friend of mine came up with and tell you about Knox.
First of all my friend was talking about a public university with an open
admission policy. Knox is private and calls itself "highly selective".
So there's likely a big difference in the pool of students we're
looking at. At Knox our average ACT score for entering classes the
last few years has been either 27 or 28, depending on the year (take
ACT scores with a pound of salt as well.) About 25% of our students
are first-generation college students, and more than 85% of our
students get some form of financial aid. We have 11% international
students (mostly South and East Asian) and are about 25% students of
color. About 45% of our students come from Illinois.
Literacy and numeracy: I'd say our students generally have decent
writing skills. All our first-year students take a Preceptorial course
which is writing intensive. It includes several weeks of writing
instruction, but isn't really a composition course. It's taught by
faculty from all across campus - I've taught it once. Faculty are
given some instruction in teaching writing, but mostly we're on our
own. Our students also must take two more writing-intensive courses
during their tenure at Knox, one of which must be in their major. Most
take more. My CS majors learn technical writing mostly from me in an
upper-level course that's required of all majors. I'd say they end up
definitely on a bell curve there in terms of quality of writing.
Numeracy quite a different story. Our students are supposed to show
Quantitative proficiency (usually through their ACT score) and
Quantitative Literacy (QL) by taking a course labeled QL. All Math
courses are labeled QL, as are a few other courses - one CS course, a
general Stats course, Chemistry I, 3 Econ courses, and most Physics
courses. Our students try to avoid the Math courses like the plague
and when forced to take one, will generally take the lowest possible
Math course (our two biggest majors are Engish Lit and Creative
Writing - mostly they don't see the use). The Stats course is very
popular as long as one of the Math profs isn't teaching it.
We have one Math course considered to be remediary and our Center for
Teaching and Learning (aka the Writing center) also offers a remedial
math course.
Logic and rhetoric: Can't say that our students are particularly
strong on logic, but for rhetoric, the writing requirement in the
major helps.
Travel experiences: About 1/2 of our students have some sort of
overseas experience. Many of them for one, two, or three terms (three
terms is one academic year for us), some for as short as a week or
two. We have three overseas centers (France, Spain, & Argentina) and
except for the plane fare, the overseas terms at our centers cost just
what a term on campus does.
Critical thinking: Ah well, learning to distinguish between belief
and fact, having informed opinions. Well, these are 18 - 22 year olds
after all. Lots of things are still very black and white to them, and
they have ideas I consider strange. In several of my CS classes we
talk about topics considered to be "computer ethics", "professional
practice", "impact of technology on society", privacy, etc. These are
all very interesting discussions. They don't tend to believe in
copyright or intellectual property rights at all (gee, what a
surprise), but they also can't really articulate why their belief
might be right or wrong. With ethical case studies related to the
profession, they tend to always want to do the right thing, but they
also are still pretty self-centered. They tend to be very
compassionate and righteous about discrimination, but as I said, it's
still pretty black and white for them, not much of a middle ground. I
love playing the devil's advocate in these discussions.
Oh, and the final word - they all think they know way more than they
really do, and we do a terrible job of convincing them that this
broad, general education thingie is really worthwhile.
cheers,
john
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