Turtles all the way down

For years I’ve heard that the US schools are behind in teaching math, science and engineering, and here it is again.

U.S. grade school students continue to lag behind other developed countries in science and math, although fourth and eighth grade U.S. students showed steady gains in math since 1990. Only fourth graders showed gains in science compared to 1996.

But:

The U.S. is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world supplying an estimated $340 billion for R&D in 2006, a record high.

One theory is that these surveys and tests report the progress of the average student, but it’s mostly the top students who go into math, science and engineering as a career. Thus, being average at teaching the average kids is ok as long as we’re doing well at teaching the kids who are interested in a science or engineering career path.

Or, there is so little motivation for top graduates of math, science and engineering universities to become teachers, that those who are best positioned to teach the material don’t. In other words, teaching salaries cannot compete with corporate and industry salaries.

Ok, but once again the survey must have missed everyone I know.

But what is the engineer’s mindset?

The authors call it a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.

A past survey in the United States has already shown that the proportion of engineers who declare themselves to be on the right of the political spectrum is greater than any other disciplinary groups–such as economists, doctors, scientists, and those in the humanities and social sciences.

Would it really be that hard for the people who send bills to clearly state on each bill who I should make the check out to? Often the companies I do business with bill under a different name or entity. This morning I spent several minutes reading over a bill about five times only to give up and guess how to make out the check.

Hint to those with a large backlog in accounts receivable…or anyone who likes to get paid: make it easy for your customers to pay you!

I meant to post this two days ago, but time flies.

So McCain takes a big win, largely because Romney and Huckabee split the hardcore conservative vote. This begs the question of how much does getting elected president rely on two of your opponents stealing votes from one another?

Perot helped Clinton in 1992 and 1996 by taking votes from Bush Sr. and Dole, respectively. Bush Jr. won in 2000 probably because Nader took a few percentage points away from Gore.

Maybe it happens all the time.

Now that Romney’s out I expect Huckabee’s campaign to surge, but he may be effectively eliminated mathematically at this point. I also expect McCain, to head right in a major way over the next few months possibly picking up Huckabee as a running mate.

I have a paper due on Monday.

I started it a couple of weeks ago. At that point it was looking pretty good.

On Saturday it sucked.

On Sunday it was looking good again.

Yesterday it sucked.

Today it is looking better.

Barring any interruptions of suckage between now and Monday, I think I’ll do just fine…

111 years ago, the Indiana legislature tried to define pi. But they picked the wrong value.

1897: Egged on by an amateur mathematician, the Indiana General Assembly almost passes a bill adopting 3.2 as the exact value of pi (or π). Only the intervention of a Purdue University mathematician who happens to be visiting the legislature prevents the bill from becoming law, saving the most acute political embarrassment.

What became known as the Indiana pi bill was sponsored by Rep. T.I. Record at the behest of Edwin J. Goodwin, a physician and math dilettante who claimed to have figured out how to square circles.

House Bill 246, proposed as “an act introducing a new mathematical truth,” went through three reads before being passed unanimously by the House, presumably to avoid having to endure a fourth.

Supposedly, movie producer Sir Alexander Korda, said, “A bore is someone who has no small talk.”

There is another category of bore: someone who doesn’t have anything but small talk. Nothing starts a yawn-fest faster than both the guy who can’t stop talking about his new optimizing compiler, and the guy goes on forever about last night’s game and the weather.

Being boring is about being too extreme and missing your audience’s sweet spot of interest.

The guy in back of me at Starbucks this morning ordered an eight-shot latte. The cashier and barista repeated it a few times to one another to make sure that it was, in fact, a request for an eight-shot latte.

This blows away my previous record of a five-shot drink. I’ve never ordered more than a three-shot drink myself, but apparently I’m endlessly fascinated with other folks caffeination habits.

Today I signed up for DRM-free music download service mTraks. They claim to still be in beta but they’ve been up and running for about a year. The main reason I signed up is that a couple of really good labels are releasing their content to mTraks but not to eMusic.

Compared to eMusic, mTraks is more expensive (about $3-7 per album, in bulk) and is missing eMusic’s very convenient download manager. However, their selection and MP3 quality are both commendable, so we will see.

I recently put up a score of exactly 66,666 on Guitar Hero III.

Seriously though, it’s a great game. My wife and kids enjoy it too, and we all can’t wait until the standalone controller is released for the Wii.

So far I’ve beaten the game on easy and medium difficulty and am about half way through hard, which is, um…hard. After a few songs on this level I understand why I’ll never be a real musician. My brain and fingers are just not connected properly. I know what I want my fingers to do but they have a mind of their own.