lecturing via videotape

I think this is an interesting concept:

Brad DeLong: The Future of Higher Education?

The post is about the Teaching Company, which records lectures onto DVD and sells them for individual education purposes. I've had a couple conversations with people in the last month or so about the state of undergraduate education at top tier universities (where freshmen are taught by professional researchers) and at public schools. In the university context, we've discussed expanding on the current class of lecturers, granting them tenure, increasing their salaries, and trying to correct the perception that they're failures. In public schools, the general perception is that salaries need to be increased significantly to create an actual competitive market for teachers.

Instead of both of these, why not use effective presentations on DVD, centrally designed and widely distributed, in the classroom in lieu of poor lecturers? Obviously I'd want to have someone there who could answer questions; it would also be nice to equip students with 'pause' functions so they could stop the presentation and ask someone a question. But it would require a lot less from the teachers, it could greatly improve comprehension and keep students' interests (because the presentations would undoubtedly be more entertaining and compelling), and it would be a lot less expensive. And you'd still need people to create and grade assignments. But the lecture is the most important part of effective communication, so this seems like a really efficient way to improve the quality of education.

i knew it!

and today the rest of the world is figuring it out too: NYTimes: Watching TV Makes You Smarter

law school and learning

Look! Harvard students don't learn any law either!

So let's ask ourselves: what are we doing here? This question goes far beyond what I can credibly write in a short blog post. But let me offer a few alternatives, for your consideration:

• We're here for career advancement. This 'JD' thing is our ticket to a high paying, high status job. It doesn't really matter what we do here, because we'll learn everything we need to know on the job. Our target is a firm with size, money, and prestige. We select our courses and other activities for the sole purpose of making ourselves ideal law firm associates.
  
• We're here for the environment. We're not-yet-fully-jaded intellectuals who like to sit around and discuss social, political, and legal theory. We design our day-to-day lives to satisfy our intellectual curiosity of the moment; we take seminars because they are venues where our voices have less competition, and where we can show off our rhetorical abilities to the fullest. Some of us are also here for a different sort of career advancement: we want to end up as academics, so we can spend the rest of our lives in this environment.
  
• We're here because we couldn't think of anything better to do with our lives. There are no good jobs for a B.A. in English, and med school and grad school were both unappealing. We'll have some difficulty choosing classes and other activities, but there are enough people around that we'll be able to tag along with our classmates and take the classes they take. We'll end up with firm jobs where someone will just tell us what to do all the time, and our indecision and indirection will never trouble us again.
  
• We're here to fight for justice. There are problems in the world, the wrong people are deciding what to do about them, and we want to equip ourselves with the necessary tools and get ourselves into the necessary career positions to be able to combat them. A lucky few of us will find a way to fight for justice right after graduation, and will spend the rest of our lives living on $30k/year, and losing sleep and developing large ulcers as our efforts struggle against corporate lobbying and the short-term opportunism of politicians. But most of us will take firm jobs after graduation, to pay off our loans or to gain experience, and many of us will stick with them as our ideals are replaced by materialism and momentum, which we discover are far easier gods to appease.
  

Am I too harsh? I don't really think any of these paths are better than any others. Some treat the law as a calling, and some a job; both have their risks. I don't know if any of us have a choice of which path we take; I think our character makes the decision for us. But whichever path we're on, we owe it to ourselves not to hold on too tightly, or perhaps not to let it hold on to us too tightly.

small world

did you know that there is a New Haven, WV? there's also a Hartford in approximately the same relative geographic position, though i believe it's just over the OH border. that strikes me as really, really weird. see for yourself.

Yahoo! Maps - New Haven, WV

[in case you were wondering how i found it: i was googling 'new haven post office' and one of the first few links was this page.]

[in case you were wondering why i care: i grew up in WV and now live in new haven, CT.]

mandatory tipping

I went to a coffee shop today for a cup of coffee and a yogurt. The price was $5.60; I handed the lady $6, and she didn't give me my change. I had fully intended to put it in the tip jar - I do that a lot. But I wasn't even given the option. For some reason I feel offended by this. And don't tell me that she remembered me and that she knew I'd put it in the jar. I don't go there that frequently, I order very different things, I get lots of different checkout people, and I often keep the change.

I wonder when they decide to just keep it. I assume they'd only keep coins - so that if my order was $9 exactly, and I gave them a $10, I'd get my dollar back. I probably would get my dollar back if my order was $19 and I gave them a $20 too, even though that's a smaller tip than they took from me in this case. And I'm sure that I'd get my change if my order was something like $1.33 and I gave $2.

This is also the coffee store that refuses to take $20's after like 3 in the afternoon because they run out of small bills. They need some new management. If they weren't the place with good yogurt parfaits, the richest coffee, and a good selection of loose tea I'd stop going.

Someday I'll open my own cafe. The checkout people will give you your change, they'll always have plenty of small bills, and the menu will definitely have a 'bottomless cup of coffee' option.

it's about damn time

AP: Wisconsin Considers Legalizing Cat Hunting

'nuff said.

NOTE FOR MORONS: I'm joking. No letter bombs, please.

an ode to coffee

This truth has filled me up with glee.
I think I'll share, so all can be.
When you're not right,
the world's a fright,
Old Black and Bitter, that's the key.

I like Columbian okay,
but I'd take Kenyan any day.
The taste of wine
is sometimes fine,
but richer taste is the true way.

Sumatra often is my pick,
and Mocha Java does the trick.
They're smooth and strong,
but drink too long,
you'll find they carry quite a kick.

Too, good Sunani warms the room.
Yes, Kona wipes away the gloom.
They cost a price,
and they're real nice.
But naught compares to good Jablum.

Inspired by: 3martini: Hold on Tiiiiight to Your Dreams

Coffee - Wikipedia

why i don't do podcasts

Reference sites: Wikipedia on Podcasting; iPodder

Initial disclaimer: I've never listened to a podcast. If you're the type to automatically dismiss my criticism just for that, then feel free, or find a more emotionally invested person to pick a fight with.

Maybe there's a world of wonders of podcasting which I have yet to discover. But I think there are a lot of things in life that don't need to be experienced, and I personally plan to include podcasting in that category. I think it's a fad that will go away once people stop being amused by it, and I'm willing to put that down in print, knowing that there's a possibility it will become huge, in 6 months or so I'll start podcasting, and I'll have my words flung back into my face. I don't think that people who enjoy it are wrong. I just don't understand what they get out of it. Here are some of the reasons why I think it's not a great form of communication (which mostly seem to be derivable from the fact that I have the attention span of a gnat). If any big podcast fans want to supply their reasons for liking it, I would be happy to hear them.

• I'm not an audio learner. I have enough trouble with lectures which are given by (supposed) professionals. I prefer communication in the form of pictures, source code/mathematical formulae, and direct physical contact.
  
• Listening to an audio recording of someone's speech demands almost full attention. It's hard for me to pay that much attention to a recording. Hell, it's hard for me to pay that much attention to someone in a face-to-face conversation. Fortunately most people don't have that much to say and i can get away without paying full attention. [I'm trying to be funny here.]
  
• Text as a form of online communication is far more efficient. The speaker can convey it faster. I can absorb it faster (and with considerably less attention and greater multitasking capability). And i can screen it much faster. I skim blog posts very quickly (in like 1-2 seconds) before deciding whether or not to read them. Just imagine for a moment trying to determine in 1-2 seconds whether or not a podcast was worth listening to.
  
• I admit additional information can be conveyed through speech that cannot be conveyed through text, such as 1) funny accents and impersonations, 2) dryness to indicate sarcasm, 3) sounds of breathing, and so forth. But I expect a lot of podcasts aren't intended to convey funny accents or sarcasm, and are really just spoken forms of what would otherwise be text posts.
  

This all is a comparison between podcasting and text blogging. Perhaps a more favorable comparison could be made between podcasting and web publishing of AV files. Perhaps it's best to view podcasting as a combination between text blogging and web publishing of AV files. But I fundamentally don't think the multi-producer multi-user communication environment of the blogosphere will support spoken sound recordings very well.

today in metafilter

I know the whole posting-just-links-to-other-posts thing is lame, but these two metafilter posts I have to share.

The first links to this site which contains a QT movie of the dramatic end scene from Seven re-enacted with stuffed animals. This is an example of why I am willing to fight for reduced copyright restrictions on derivative works, and if you watch the video yourself, I think you'll be inclined to agree.

The second links to a number of different websites discussing cognitive biases, things like the Zeigarnik effect, our tendency to seek closure for a task and to forget about addenda assigned after our perceived closure has occurred. Very interesting reading, I think, and also more tools that i can use to continue the world-wide imposition of my will on others.