Various bits and pieces

[unixronin]

• Drug decriminalization success story in Portugal, via Scientific American and via Salon.
• The dark side of Dubai — the paradise in the desert, built on debt by slave labor.  Anyone can come, one way or another, but not just anyone can leave.  It’s been the perfect resort for some of the more repellent social classes; but now it’s drying up and blowing away on the wind.
• A rebuttal from a Dubai journalist airs some of the UK’s dirty laundry, before declaring that “out of respect for Britain” he’s not going to.  Wait, I thought you just did...?
• “America the Illiterate”
• Human rights abuses unimportant to “useful idiots”
• “The ship is sinking: Quick, add water”
• Modernized energy systems less secure; critical infrastructure at risk?
• IBM Fellow Carl Anderson says the end of the Moore’s Law era is at hand
• On the lighter side, fire eating:  Indian woman earns Guinness world record by eating 51 Naga Jolokia peppers.  She said she wasn’t feeling well, having eaten 60 at a local event earlier in the day...

(Some links via 7leaguebootdisk, some from elsewhere)

Comments

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

The article about America the Illiterate is the scariest and most troublesome of them all.

I just finished reading a biography of John Adams (Party of One (http://www.patriotresource.com/resources/history/books/grant.html), by economist James Grant -- a book I recommend to you, by the way, I think you will particularly enjoy it). I've returned the book to the library so I can't give you the exact quote, nor can I find it online, but Adams has much to say about literacy. He insists that the French Revolution was doomed to violence from the start because a nation that is illiterate simply cannot support a democracy.

As we become a more and more illiterate nation, I fear for our future.

well, this grimmed up my day quite nicely

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

as a (science) teacher of predominantly illiterate 12/13 year olds, i agree.
it's frightening. and horrifying.

my struggles with graphs are monumental. if they can't read the words, how can they derive meaning from the graphs? if they don't understand basic units of measurement and how they can relate to each other, what are the graphs besides easily manipulateable pictures?

my disenchantment with human nature has only deepened... immensely... in the past year. i can only hope that with a little more maturity (ah, hell, so many of them are going to drop out before they're mature enough to care...)
i don't want to end up a bitter old burnout. there's a timetable to how long i'm going to allow myself to do this. until i pay off my education, maybe...


oh. and i knew dubai was a frightening arabic limbo, but i had no idea how thoroughly.... of course all the shiny gittering odes to excessive consumption could only have been built on the backs of horrific working conditions........ but i hadn't thought it through quite that far.

Re: well, this grimmed up my day quite nicely

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

we should be able to hold kids back if they fail. that's my newest crusade. parents should not be allowed to socially promote their incompetent children. being able to stay with one's age group is overvalued. i would have been much happier with the kids two or three years older than me... and i would have been able to do it, just like my other sibs have.

Re: well, this grimmed up my day quite nicely

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Abso-friggin'-lutely. Promoting kids who aren't ready not only sets them up to fail, it sets them up to think that's OK when they're adults, and then we get the Peter Principle in full action. "I know X is incompetent, but he's due for a promotion." That's how we got Bob "Because It's Bob Dole's Turn" Dole running for President. Completely fucking incompetent and all the charisma of a brick, but it was His Turn.