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August 6, 2025
The trouble with student evaluations
The biggest problem with student evaluations of their teachers isn't the room it opens up for mischief, even though that problem is quite significant, particularly as course evaluations become a prospective tool for government intervention at colleges and universities. That problem is emergent and well worth ongoing attention. But even in a world where every evaluation were submitted (and reviewed) entirely in good faith, the bigger problem is that students are almost by definition inadequately equipped to gauge what they're evaluating. ■ You don't know on the last day of class how much you will retain nor how well this instructor compares to one you didn't have, teaching the same course but in a different way. You can't know these things as a student on the final day of class -- unless, perhaps, you're taking the same class for the second time because you failed the first, in which case there's a decidedly strong conflict of interest. ■ The meaningful outcomes of a course -- from pre-kindergarten all the way through graduate school -- may remain unknown for a decade or more to come. A well-honed ability to compare and contrast teaching quality is unlikely to develop materially along the way. ■ If teacher evaluations have a meaningful impact on things like tenure or pay, then the whole thing sets up a terrible incentive structure, rewarding whatever impresses students in the short term rather than what improves their outcomes for the long term. This is one of the reasons why performance pay for teachers is such a difficult topic: In a truly rational world, teachers should be incentivized to do what optimizes outcomes for their students many years into the future. ■ That doesn't mean students shouldn't be asked for evaluations -- especially open-ended ones. But evaluations constructed with badly-chosen metrics and performed by ill-equipped evaluators can't help but cause bad outcomes. Signs are pointing to their increasing use, so it's prudent to pay attention now.
August 4, 2025
If you want a quotation to be remembered, misattribute it to someone famous. Winston Churchill "said" lots of things he didn't really say. Albert Einstein, too. And almost nobody has more misattributions than Abraham Lincoln, whose gift for language and exceptional place in history combine to make him a particularly good "source" for many a memorable bon mot. ■ One of those misattributions is "If I had five minutes to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three sharpening my axe." It's a terrific proverb, really, even if Lincoln didn't say it. And it's particularly timely at the moment. ■ Conor Sen, an opinion columnist at Bloomberg, ignited a mild online controversy by declaring, "My gut feeling is that parents trying to make their kids elite at reading and writing as a backlash against our screen/video world are like teaching their kids the Dewey decimal system, microfiche, driving a stick shift." He added: "There's not going to be much interesting written content post-2020's." ■ Sometimes people are merely stirring the pot, especially online. But the comments seem to have been taken in earnest by others, and Sen himself has defended the take. ■ Putting aside what Sen intended by "elite at reading and writing" (probably a reference to a recent "sign of the times" article in a high-status publication), reading and writing generally are probably the best examples of "axe-sharpening" life skills that anyone can develop. They prepare the way for practically all other worthwhile endeavors. It's not a matter of elite behavior; in fact, it's quite the opposite. ■ The skills of literacy are valued most by those to whom they are denied. When Booker T. Washington tells in his autobiography how "From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read", he conveys a desire that wouldn't have been different, even if he had lived in a "screen/video world". ■ Much can be conveyed by the routes of oral transmission (video, music, speech, radio, or tales told around the campfire). But nothing in thousands of years of human civilization has exceeded the capacity of the well-written (and usually carefully-edited) written word to convey knowledge, meaning, and depth. ■ The cultural pendulum has swung far in the direction of the oral formats for now, but it's an episodic event, not a permanent change. Even barbarians ultimately come to regret that something is missing. Either things begin to fall apart at the societal level or, individually, they respond to the very same innate spark that animated Booker T. Washington to know that his early illiteracy deprived him of something he wanted very much. Human nature is curious. Plenty more remains to be both read and written.
August 3, 2025
An AI do-and-don't list for teachers - part 1
The school year typically begins in earnest in mid-August, and one of the hot topics for teachers this school year will be the reach of artificial intelligence tools both inside and outside the classroom. As with every other new piece of educational technology, there are good ways and bad ways to put it to use. Some recommendations follow. ■ DON'T tell students that artificial intelligence will replace the jobs they want. Technological change always causes changes to the labor force, but very few jobs are eliminated entirely. Telling young people their hoped-for careers will be replaced is discouraging -- and even labor economists rarely dare to predict the future with that much certainty. ■ DO tell students to look for opportunities to maximize the gap between what they have to give up to have a career and what they get back in reward. Encourage them to think about the path to a "dream job" as a series of opportunities that require trade-offs, like spending time in college, climbing a seniority ladder, or sacrificing other opportunities. On the other side, people are rewarded with more than just money: Social approval, work-life balance, respect, and many other factors are involved. The difference between what you get and what you give up to get it is what matters. ■ DON'T vilify all artificial intelligence tools equally. As with every technology, there are good and bad uses, which depend on the character of the user. (Even a kitchen knife can be used to lovingly prepare a meal or to commit cold-blooded murder.) ■ DO explain the limits of the usefulness of all technological tools, using real terms. Machine learning has the potential to do extraordinary things when large volumes of data are involved, as in medical research. But it also has the capacity to create terrible pain to real people when it's used to do truly ghoulish things like generating spammy obituaries. ■ DON'T promote unquestioning faith in the answers generated by artificial intelligence tools. Just because Google and other high-profile services are nudging people to use their AI tools doesn't make them more trustworthy or credible. It only means they're potentially profitable. ■ DO show students how to incorporate AI-generated content into a careful search process, including how to cross-reference among sources and how to independently verify what is often served with great authority. Show examples of dangerous and stupid errors that can and should be checked by humans, like obvious biographical and historical errors, scientific mistakes, or falsified reporting.
August 1, 2025
One source: To discover quite by accident something you didn't know you wanted to know. It's a delightful gift to stumble into learning something new without having sought it. But you have to practice being open to surprise and wonder, or else it won't happen.
July 31, 2025
Ode to the dictionary in an unfashionable age
Of all the forms of educational technology that have ever been introduced, from the pencil to the chalkboard to the personal computer, perhaps the most elegant is the humble desktop dictionary. Think of its many magnificent features. ■ The dictionary is effectively self-contained: Starting from the knowledge of only a few basic words, a child can construct the meanings of all other words by building from one entry to another. ■ It manages to be comprehensive and yet compact at the same time. And from the knowledge contained in a dictionary, effectively all other learning can be developed with enough access to the right books. Imagine what historians would give just to have a thorough dictionary of certain dead and lost languages. ■ A good dictionary manages to avoid circular references while introducing background information of great value, like word origins, historical uses, and designated correct pronunciations. ■ The only real flaw to the dictionary is the inescapable fact that a person can't look for a word with certainty without knowing how it is spelled, though the navigational clues within the dictionary can help. ■ The other thing the dictionary offers is serendipity. Words being listed alphabetically don't necessarily have anything to do with one another, but an adjacent word to the one the reader is searching may, in fact, open up a brand-new door to something entirely worth knowing. That may not always be the case, but there is a certain joy to be found in encountering something new and satisfying. ■ Tools like dictionaries are indispensable, even when they seem to be out of favor. We shouldn't assume that schoolkids are learning how to use the paper dictionary, when spell check and online dictionaries are readily available on their school-issued tablets and laptops. ■ But the habits and practices of their use need to be handed down, especially when companies as reputable as Microsoft are turning over their grammar checks to artificial intelligence while others, like Grammarly, are touting their tools to take over writing altogether. We are sailing mostly unwittingly into dangerous waters, and history is witness that enough other arts have been lost to time. Save the language and make a child look up what Webster's has to say.
Poland and Norway to team up on drone defense systems
One company from each country is entering a partnership to develop Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS). Notably, both countries border Russia, which has been aggressively weaponizing drones (UAS) against Ukraine.
A shipbuilding revival at great cost
South Korea has reportedly committed to a $150 billion "investment" in American shipbuilding capacity, using the know-how of its strong existing shipbuilding industry. The country is trying to win favor with the White House in an attempt to avoid getting hit with high and capricious tariff rates. Supposedly, the President still intends to hit the country with a 15% import tax, which seems imprudent for a country that is a good ally and a useful trading partner in a strategic geopolitical location.
Science has been pretty convinced that there's a bunch of matter in the Universe that we haven't been able to locate. A research project by Caltech and Harvard found it, and "revealed that 76 percent of the universe's normal matter lies in the space between galaxies, also known as the intergalactic medium. About 15 percent resides in galaxy halos, and the remainder is concentrated within galaxies -- in stars or in cold galactic gas."
"Sloppers" will come to regret outsourcing their thoughts
It has been suggested that "power users" of chatbots like ChatGPT should be called "sloppers", since they open themselves up to mentally swallowing the vast amounts of "AI slop" being produced by those tools. It's a very good word.
During the peak of network television dominance -- just before cable came along to ensure that there would always be at least 57 channels and nothing on -- individual scripts may not have been entirely predictable, but there was never much doubt about the direction that any individual episode might take. Problems would be solved, crises would be overcome, bad guys would be caught. The only reason it took so many months to figure out who shot J.R. Ewing was that real-world people were arguing over money. Scripts usually came across with the subtlety of an after-school special. ■ Fast-forward to the present, and it's no longer possible even to precisely quantify the number of channels available to the television viewer. Streaming especially has obliterated the old strategies. That chaos has resulted in much the opposite problem: Scripts are being written with binge-watching in mind and the specter of the second screen ever present. ■ In the realm of prestige television, an overcorrection can be seen in scripts becoming increasingly inferential -- sequential episodes skipping vital plot points in between that only make sense once the viewer attends to the context clues. "Arrested Development" did it for fun, with false promises at the end of each episode about what would happen "On the next 'Arrested Development'". ■ But serious television often now omits a lot. And though it can be hard to look away because the conflicts are so compelling, the shots so beautiful, and the actors so skilled, there's also something jarring about how screenwriting seems to have invited itself to skip a lot of details along the way to dropping heavy dramatic changes at the end of a season. Thus, viewers can find themselves drawn in by the screen presence of gifted actors on a show like "The Bear" but still reaching the end of a season and wondering why they hadn't been told any of the secrets sometime sooner. ■ Human storytelling doesn't always have to keep an explicit lesson in mind, but there's at least a little danger in surrendering so much of a story's energy to atmospherics, no matter how good they are. It's not that every scene needs to be worthy of a "The More You Know" comet trail, but audiences do deserve to know a little more about themselves at the end of a commitment to a program. High-prestige shows like "Mad Men", "Game of Thrones", and "The Sopranos" all managed to frustrate many of their fans with terminal ambiguity. Some people like to have things to wonder about after a show has finished its run, but few shows have the honesty to admit that, like "Curb Your Enthusiasm", their goal is to leave with "no lessons learned".
July 30, 2025
An American banking executive from Wells Fargo has been told she can't leave China because of a shadowy "criminal" investigation. What is the case about? What is the purported "involvement"? These things seem to remain unknown -- which doesn't necessarily make them untrue or pretextual, but it definitely doesn't serve to alleviate concerns that they are. ■ The Economist published a compelling podcast on China's use of arbitrary imprisonment as a tool of intimidation against foreigners. Much injustice can be done under the false flag of "the law", and there's a plainly evident track record to that effect in China. ■ Wells Fargo has suspended all employee travel to China as a result of the ongoing incident, a decision which seems utterly belated. Under current conditions, it's hard to see what rewards are great enough for any American whose background or profile could raise any attention at all to be motivated to go to China for the foreseeable future. ■ What could be worth the non-zero risk of being used as a game piece and facing a thousand days in a Communist prison? The reputational damage deserves to last for a generation. In this conflict, there is a lesson for America, China, and the rest of the world: You can't be rich all alone, and you can't have the protection of rules all alone, either. ■ Both conditions are dependent upon sharing with others. They simply aren't durable without the consent and the participation of others, and to the extent that anybody tries to keep them to themselves, they risk losing them altogether. ■ Adversarial relationships -- like those that require beating up on rivals in order to get rich, or that depend upon flexing dubious "legal" authority to put others in their place -- are inherently unstable and unsustainable. They can rack up short-term victories, but they can't achieve lasting success. Constructive cooperation doesn't afford a lot of opportunities to feel like a victor in combat, but it's the only way to really reap the benefits of strength.
Common-sense rules that really could stop about half of headline news stories before they happen: 1. Read the fine print 2. Read between the lines 3. Read the manual
July 29, 2025
Computers don't understand time
Cambridge University has unveiled the results of a remarkable project to catalog and digitally archive a large collection of medieval medical manuscripts. It's a fascinating undertaking, compiling 8,000 recipes for supposed cures from 186 different texts. Much of the text is unintelligible to the modern reader and speaker of English, but some transcripts are available. ■ Beyond the pure curiosity factor, it is a fascinating project because it reveals something important about human nature that distinguishes us (we, of "organic" intelligence, as opposed to the artificial type) from the many computers upon which we have come to rely so thoroughly in our modern age. The central matter is this: A computer doesn't understand time. Nor does it recognize changes over time as having value. And there's little reason to believe that digital computing machines ever will. They can measure the passage of time, of course, and they can be programmed to indicate time as a meaningful variable. Even a microwave oven can do that. ■ But when it comes to finding answers, the very nature of binary programming is that there is either a current answer or not. And if an answer is old, it is no longer the answer, and is probably to be discarded. That's adequate if a person is asking Google "Is there a tsunami warning in effect for Honolulu right now?". ■ What makes us distinct from the machines we build -- even the large language models and "machine learning" products we can design -- is that human beings can recognize the change in knowledge and understanding over time, and can hold conflicting, expired, or misleading information in mind when arriving at conclusions. ■ Decisions that were made by medieval practitioners of medicine (or perhaps it would be more accurate to call them "healing arts", since there was little of what we know as "science" involved) were often radically different from those made today, but those changes themselves have value. What led, for example, from mystical claptrap about "humours" to immunotherapy today? ■ Knowledge took a path from the past into the present, and choices that are objectively wrong today may have been conditionally right in the past. Likewise, the "right" answer to a question can easily change depending on whether we're asking a kindergartener, a high school sophomore, or a Ph.D. candidate -- what you learn as a child may be subjectively or conditionally right for what you can comprehend at the time, even setting the stage for you to be objectively accurate later on. There are more than seven colors of the rainbow, but that doesn't make a child wrong when they recite the words behind "Roy G. Biv". A stage of knowledge may be important to get right, even if it will later be judged wrong. ■ It's important for the purposes of human judgment to understand what changed and why over a time period, and that's something you can only do if you have an organic understanding of time. There's little reason to believe that any digital machine ever will. That doesn't mean we should negate their use -- but it does mean we should develop a nuanced understanding of the theory of knowledge itself before making ourselves dependent upon the choices of any device that has never felt the pressure of a timed test or daydreamed while staring idly into space.
Tsunami warning for the Pacific
Hawaii and other locations could see it
(Video) Some gentle bubbling over Des Moines
July 28, 2025
Cooper Lund notes: "There's a lot of people on the left who have substituted their version of communism for puritanical religion and then wonder why more people don't agree with them." The famous line from "Glengarry Glen Ross", "ABC [...] Always Be Closing" gets morphed by some into "ABS: Always Be Scolding". And it's not a good look. The semi-professional scolds need to be reminded periodically that it's quite OK to take "the pursuit of happiness" at face value.
Marcus Hutchins: "Being in tech and having a single modicum of critical thinking is just screaming 'this isn't what LLMs are designed for' over and over as people shove a bunch of word predictors into critical decision making processes because some glorified used car salesmen told them it would fix all their problems". ■ If you invent a tool that actually increases productivity, you're doing some good...if and only if it does so at lower cost than what it replaces. ■ If you invent a tool that pretends to increase productivity but turns everything into ham salad, then you should probably stop over-promising.
Winds of 60 to 90 mph are being tracked in storms across northern Iowa. That's low-grade tornado speed, but spread across a wide area.
July 27, 2025
A huge step forward against HIV
The FDA has approved a twice-a-year treatment to prevent HIV -- a shot that showed spectacular results in preventing HIV among test populations. The European Medicine Agency has seconded the approval, which should lead to full EU approval by the end of the year. That it works is scientifically wonderful. That it only requires two injections a year is really a bonanza for public health: As with any infectious disease, the fewer the obstacles to prevention compliance, the better. And drug-maker Gilead is promising efforts to make it widely affordable.
There's an old adage that if there's a gold rush underway, you don't want to be a prospector -- you want to be the one selling shovels. There's a modern-day angle to that perspective: In the midst of yet another technology boom (this time, concentrated on spending related to artificial intelligence), you don't want to be chasing the tech prize: It's far smarter to get in on the real estate game. ■ Geographically, the San Francisco Bay Area starts out with some tough constraints: Mountains, water, and a tightly-bound traffic system, just to name a few. But there are also some serious artificial constraints on real estate, like San Francisco's notoriously restrictive rules on zoning and housing codes. ■ Things are slow to change, even if the problems are widely evident. A report from San Jose State University claims that "the amount a household needs to make to buy a house in the San Jose metro area is $468,252". Median rent is only "affordable" for a household making $136,532 a year (assuming that a maximum of 30% of income should be spent on housing). It becomes clear from figures like those that big Silicon Valley salaries are being funneled in no small part to those who own real estate in the area -- either for rent or for sale. ■ It should be no wonder that working from home appeals so much to people facing costs of such a magnitude. What good is a high income if it's just a pass-through to a mortgage banker or landlord? And circumstances like high real-estate costs spill over to everyone else in a community, which can instigate an upward spiral of costs as everyone tries simply to keep up -- and those who benefit from the peculiarities of the market work hard to entrench the conditions that inflate their wealth. Anytime concentrated benefits conflict with diffuse costs, the safe bet is on the side with the concentrated benefits.
Discovered: The "Law and Order" theme song line dance
(Video) Someone could write an entire feature film script about how this came into being, and it would be a better story than 90% of what Hollywood normally greenlights.
July 26, 2025
In theory, Tesla has unintentionally solved homelessness in America: With the advent of full self-driving mode, a person could soon plausibly sleep behind the wheel of a moving vehicle without a hazard to self or others. Such is America's cultural commitment to freedom of movement (particularly by roads) that we never challenge anyone over the mere fact of traveling from place to place, and we commit seemingly endless public funds to furnishing the pavement upon which vehicles may freely travel. ■ Thus, once "self-driving" no longer requires driver supervision, anyone with a fully self-driving vehicle could, in theory, get a sheltered night's sleep while driving aimlessly about the streets of a community, even if they could not afford permanent shelter where they wanted to be. ■ This argument is, of course, an exercise in stretching a question to logical absurdity. It does, however, highlight a serious conflict in public policy: We provide almost lavishly for people to be in motion, but we often adopt a conflicting mess of barriers to maximizing the supply of places for people to be (literally and figuratively) at rest. ■ Perhaps the most extreme demonstration of that imbalance is the fact that the construction of the Interstate Highway System alone probably displaced about a million people from their established homes. People in motion were given priority; people at rest were literally forced to make way. ■ With "homelessness" writ large thrusting itself to the front pages of the news, it's worth a reminder that people find themselves without shelter for all kinds of reasons, some self-imposed, some by external circumstances, and others by a combination of the two. ■ But we won't get very far in the effort to alleviate their problems without seeing that secure, dignified housing is a continuum -- some have a lot of it, some have none, and others have less than they want. Finding ways to produce a lot of it benefits practically everyone (though it would benefit even more in practical terms if we could decouple home prices from the accumulation of household wealth). Nor will we do ourselves any good if we ignore the inconsistency between how we treat the very same people through public policies, depending on whether they are in motion or not.
July 25, 2025
In February 1947, George C. Marshall was the newly-confirmed Secretary of State. Having served as Chief of Staff of the Army for the duration of World War II, Marshall had already done incomparable service to the cause of preserving the free world. ■ Marshall was entitled to a peaceful retirement, but he continued to serve his country by taking the role of the nation's chief diplomat. Only a few weeks into his role, he delivered an address at Princeton University. Having seen war brought to a righteous end, Marshall remained gravely worried about the future. ■ "You should fully understand the special position that the United States now occupies in the world, geographically, financially, militarily, and scientifically, and the implications involved," he said. "The development of a sense of responsibility for world order and security, the development of a sense of overwhelming importance of this country's acts, and failures to act, in relation to world order and security -- these, in my opinion, are great musts for your generation." ■ Marshall, the generation of soldiers who served under him, and the European reconstruction plan that bore his name all contributed mightily to that "special position". They bought the United States nearly a century of peace. But the imperative lesson to take away from Marshall's approach is that our leadership in the world was a product of collaboration, alliances, and mutual aid -- not of dominance or exploitation. Marshall foresaw that strong friends overseas were better for America than clients or vassals. ■ "I think we seldom realize our own ignorance of what has happened in the past except by way of a chronological sequence of events with the related dates," he noted, "But the important thing is to understand the true significance, the lessons of these historical events and periods." We owe the respect to the past and the obligation to the future to be sure that we consult Marshall's time and consider how it applies today. If all we know are a few memorized names and dates, we don't really know our history at all. The lessons are just waiting there for us to learn.
July 22, 2025
Who should control screen time?
Admirably, the British government tacitly acknowledges the importance of science and technology enough to have a designated Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology -- as of now, a man named Peter Kyle. Kyle has held the job for a year, and is in the process of "looking very carefully" at the time children spend on social-media apps, promising, "I'll be making an announcement on these things in the near future". ■ By "these things", he is reported to be considering interventions like a 10:00 pm Internet curfew and a two-hour daily limit on app use for children. It is widely believed that over-use of social media is contributing to problems like sleep disruption and anxiety, and there are heartbreaking examples of gravely harmful content reaching vulnerable young people at awful times. And the rise of AI-driven chatbots presents a whole new horizon for trouble. ■ But people of goodwill ought to be reluctant -- perhaps extremely so -- to see governments act as the caretakers of children's technology use in such a nanny-state fashion as imposing curfews and mandatory time limits. New technologies almost always spark new moral panics, and moral panics tend to beget backlash. Who is more likely to uncover and share all of the loopholes around government controls: Parents or children? ■ Moreover, overwrought promises of government protection have an unpleasant way of breeding contempt for the law. At the same time, the more government promises to provide "protection" (in circumstances where it ultimately cannot deliver), the more ordinary people adopt a sense of learned helplessness and end up both disappointed and disempowered. ■ Parents and families need technological tools to help define boundaries for their children, many of which are already available but scarcely adopted. Parents need ongoing education, not only in how to manage technology at the family level, but in how to cultivate an environment to help young people take part in the real-world human engagement that everyone fears is being squeezed out by addictive tools like social media. ■ Rather than raising the stakes of a cat-and-mouse game around time spent on social media, lots of parents probably just need more and better advice about truly listening to their kids, creating attractive alternatives to mindless screen time, and opening up opportunities for the kind of face-to-face interaction with friends about which many adults reminisce fondly from their own youthful days before the Internet. ■ Childhood and adolescence have always called for thoughtful and intentional intervention by caring adults. A prudent society does much more to focus its energies on the adults closest to the developing young people, rather than trusting the interventions of government officials in faraway bureaucracies.
July 21, 2025
Since, for the most part, we no longer depend upon sports as a means to literally rehearse for combat, sports have comfortably moved into position as one of the primary means of mass entertainment in modern society. The entertainment aspect to the business has grown so large that premier professional athletes in the most-watched games rake in truly astonishing sums of money. Their elite pay, in turn, can have the effect of removing athletes from the realm of normalcy. It's hard to be down-to-earth when you're traveling with an entourage. ■ This is unfortunate, since the broad appeal of many high-profile athletes (and some coaches) gives them some of the biggest platforms to try to influence the public at large. They may not always have conventional "book learning" genius to share, but character doesn't depend on IQ. ■ Under these circumstances, it is refreshing to hear from the world's current most dominant golfer that he knows the limits of his work on the course. Addressing the press, Scottie Scheffler drew upon some of the wisdom of character when he remarked of his success, "It's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart [...] If my golf ever started affecting my home life, or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or with my son, that's going to be the last day that I play out here for a living." ■ One could argue that his enormous success gives him the freedom to make a threat like that -- $91 million in winnings (and counting) is a pretty big cushion. But one could conversely argue that it's all the more laudable for Scheffler to say something like that, knowing how many people undoubtedly envy his skills and talents -- and his wealth -- and that he publicly embraces the attitude that his family life is worth even more than $91 million.
NPR asks its audience for "the books you read during high school that helped shape who you are today". ■ Nearly every American high schooler would benefit from reading "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" and "Up from Slavery" by Booker T. Washington. The merits of both books are two-fold: They tell necessary stories about our history while offering life advice that remains timely and relevant today. ■ Franklin tells the story of a young man with some extraordinary gifts who overcame early difficulties before growing into one of the country's most influential founders. Washington's story is one of the clearest depictions of the consequences of America's original sin, but it's much more transcendent than just that. His abilities were great, but his reservoir of character was even greater -- and is still worthy of emulation. For as self-made as Franklin could rightly claim to be, Washington was even moreso. ■ Franklin was intrinsically motivated to pursue greatness, and he achieved it. Washington was driven to serve others ("I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others. This lesson I have tried to carry with me ever since."). That both men were able to make vast contributions that still matter to America today speaks to the power of individual liberty, and what a person can do when both motivated and free.
Empires and victorious armies are really just vast logistical networks, right beneath the surface
July 20, 2025
US attitudes towards higher education are improving
After taking a beating for quite a while in both the political arena and the zeitgeist, American higher education is rising in its public esteem. It's still below previous highs, according to a Gallup survey, but the improvement in public confidence is both significant in size and broad-based. Gallup's review says "About three-quarters of U.S. adults agree that higher education leads to greater innovation and discovery, while 69% say it results in better jobs and career advancement for individuals", both of which are key selling points for the sector. ■ The leading concerns are fairly predictable -- political bias and high costs. And it's likely that some of the public contention over those issues during the past few years has had something of a corrective effect, which is how these things are supposed to work: Institutions of all stripes should generally be cautiously responsive to public pressure. ■ This is especially important when they are run by priesthoods, whether literally or figuratively. Academia is quite certainly a figurative priesthood, complete with entrenched hierarchies, apostolic-style succession, and even priestly robes. That priesthood should definitely act as a bulwark against radicalism in all its forms, both those introduced from within and imposed from without. But it shouldn't be an absolute monarchy, either. ■ Society invests in higher education, both directly and indirectly, because it has the expectation that colleges will produce better citizens and generate economic returns on the investment. Those institutions should be insulated from, but not insensitive to, the thermodynamics of public opinion: Like wool mittens, not welding gloves. We can be cautiously hopeful that the changing tide of public opinion reflects some harmonization of interests, because the academic world remains fundamentally important to a world of economic and individual liberties.
An overwhelmingly good guide to AI usage
Will Leitch: "If you use AI to write something for you, it is meaningless and we'd all be better off if you had never said anything in the first place." And nine other observations, generally quite right.
An interesting exploration of American aesthetics that may explain some things that start to look obvious once you pay attention to them
"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it." - Theodore Roosevelt
July 19, 2025
160 years ago this month, a doctor was lured under false pretenses into an insane asylum, where he was effectively kidnapped by guards. The doctor died less than a month later. Aside from the theatrical allure of the incident itself, what makes the story important is the identity of the doctor. ■ He was Ignaz Semmelweis, a name basically unknown to the public today. But in his own time, he was a loud, lonely, and vigorous voice for a wildly unpopular belief: That doctors should sanitize their hands between patient interactions. Semmelweis had conclusively and empirically established that antibacterial disinfection was a necessary tool for protecting the lives of patients -- and he had done so as early as 1847. ■ His problem was that he hadn't established a satisfying explanatory theory for his evidence, and doctors didn't want to believe that they were unintentionally killing their patients. It took the further work of people like Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur to ultimately change professional attitudes. ■ We should take the Semmelweis story seriously because it points to a frailty of thinking to which we are no more immune than the doctors of his time: People don't like to hear that their own choices are causing harm, even (and perhaps especially) harm to themselves, and many will retreat to bad practices that look popular rather than heed the evidence. ■ Yet the evidence ultimately prevails, and the bad choices are what continue to cause harm -- in Semmelweis's case, literally decades of totally needless deaths of thousands of mothers, only because the evidence was uncomfortable for the professionals to hear. In some places, his advice from 160 years ago still needs to be communicated to be believed. We should be alert to the risk that plenty of professionals -- and common people alike -- may be prone to persisting in similarly stupid and self-defeating behaviors today, just because we don't like to be told that we're causing our own troubles through bad choices.
July 18, 2025
The Congressional decision to rescind $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting won't have any meaningful effect on the Federal budget (we're spending more than twice that much just on interest payments every day). It will almost certainly have a serious impact on at least some public media stations, particularly those without significant sources of other funding. ■ What the incident ought to do is cause the American public to take a serious look at what we really expect from the mass media. The US doesn't have a true "national" broadcaster in the spirit of the BBC, CBC, RTE, or other examples found in most similarly wealthy countries. To an extent, that shields us from the more contentious debates that might take place if we did. Public media outlets in the US have a lot of local choice about what to air. ■ But even in the absence of a national broadcaster, the US does have a need for public-interest media -- not necessarily NPR or PBS, but some sort of outlet that seeks to fulfill needs in the public interest, like offering emergency information, covering important content that may be commercially non-viable, and ensuring that news and subjects of public significance are covered thoughtfully and in a balanced manner. ■ Maybe that doesn't need to be performed by the outlets that have heretofore done the work. But the work needs to be done, preferably by people who know how to serve that public interest. Thoughtful, engaging debate on the matter is long overdue.
July 16, 2025
Investment management firm Apollo has shared a commentary from their chief economist under the headline, "AI Bubble Today Is Bigger Than the IT Bubble in the 1990s". Considering how explosive the dot-com bubble turned out to be, that's quite the bold claim. ■ Apollo, with its emphasis on "alternative investments", might have a conflicting incentive that would encourage them to speak warily of publicly-traded stock markets. But it's also possible to have skin in the game and yet still speak the truth. ■ With technology moguls jockeying for position on wealth rankings at the quarter-trillion-dollar scale and tech firms paying to have nuclear power plants restarted just to fuel their artificial intelligence programs, the atmosphere certainly has the whiff of bubble about it. ■ But it would also be madness to predict when any such bubble (if real) might pop, because the timing and triggers behind economic events are almost never predictable. Conditions that defy rational sense can go on for maddeningly long times, and the things that can bring them to a halt often come straight out of left field. ■ The only thing reasonable people can do (other than to invest strictly in broad-based index funds) is to deliberately seek out a sensible valuation for each company based upon explainable factors and to buy shares in those companies only when the market price is at or below that sensible valuation. Such a strategy is effectively mania-proof, which means it will often keep the investor from benefiting from the hot streaks going up, but it also keeps the money largely out of harm's way when bubbles pop.
July 15, 2025
Lock your doors (and your drives)
Most people who have parked in a ramp or a lot have seen a sign warning "Hide your valuables -- Management not responsible for lost or stolen items". For most people, that means things like keys, wallets, bags, and purses. Most of us are not traveling with items much more valuable than that. ■ But then again, most of us aren't choreographers or dancers for Beyonce, one of whom had a pair of suitcases stolen from a vehicle in Atlanta a week ago. One of those suitcases contained computer hard drives with unreleased musical tracks from the artist. In theory, at least, it would be quite the haul for a burglar. ■ The incident speaks to the importance of using security codes and encryption on really sensitive data. In theory, if the heisted hard drives were secured with the kind of basic encryption readily available on any serious computing platform, then the music would remain inaccessible even to a lucky thief. ■ Having to enter a code every time one accesses a hard drive is a pain and an inconvenience, but it's also the price of knowing that data is secure -- just like Beyonce undoubtedly has bodyguards for the security of her person. For the rest of us, encrypting everything may be overkill. But good lock screen codes, long passphrases, and encryption on the most valuable (and most portable) data devices are as necessary as locking the doors to a car in a parking garage.
July 13, 2025
The American media landscape has changed dramatically over the past quarter-century or so, particularly in light of the massive deregulatory effects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the nearly-simultaneous rise of Internet-delivered media. There are countless more outlets potentially now available (especially if one considers sources like podcasts and email newsletters to be competitive outlets), but the number of locally-owned outlets with the resources to provide around-the-clock monitoring of events has been in precipitous decline. ■ In an ideal world, every community would have access to an information source that offered live, real-time information from a credible newsgathering organization. Such an outlet would perform a true public service by ensuring that locals and travelers alike would always have a known place to tune in for critical information about events like weather emergencies without having to infer or evaluate rivals for their quality. ■ For some, public broadcasting fulfills that need. A report published under the authority of Senator Maria Cantwell says that dozens of public broadcasting outlets in disaster-prone places are potentially at risk from budget cuts. The report suggests that in some cases, no other outlet is available to provide the same kind of emergency alert function. ■ The resources required to provide a true situational awareness function are considerable. Salaries and other operational costs are significant, and the returns on that investment are uncertain at best. The changes of the last quarter-century make it even harder to perform, since ever-narrowing content feeds make it almost impossible to build mass audiences anymore. While it does not necessarily follow that the solution is to generously fund a particular type of media outlet (like public broadcasting) at taxpayer expense, we do need to seriously consider what kind of model can sustainably provide the level of service required to ensure that someone is able to sound the alarm for every community when the need arises.
July 12, 2025
It can be dangerous to read too much into any reporting on trends, since it's much too easy to extrapolate one or two examples of behavior into widespread evidence of a fad. But when evidence of a fad is compatible with things we know about human nature, then it's sensible to give it at least a fair hearing. ■ There is some reporting to suggest that some online daters are using ChatGPT to make their online flirtation more likely to get hits. It's plausible enough, given the stakes involved and the risks mot people associate with making a good impression. ■ It is entirely possible that people aren't thinking this far ahead, but it seems like it should be obvious that trying to initiate a relationship without using one's own words is a terrible act of self-sabotage. A relationship begun on false premises (like using a computer's words instead of speaking or writing honestly) should only be expected to last under extraordinary circumstances. ■ There's nothing new in searching for the right words, nor for thinking that a pretty face trained to parrot the right words would be enough. It's a story much older than George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion". But a petty impersonation of well-cultivated language isn't the same as sharing insights or creating a real connection.
July 9, 2025
Sometimes post hoc really is ergo propter hoc
One classic logical fallacy is "post hoc ergo propter hoc" -- after this, therefore because of this. It's good to be aware of the fallacy, since things often happen in sequence but not out of consequence. Sometimes you wash your car and then it rains -- meteorology taking no actual interest whatsoever in the state of your automobile. ■ But when a flagship product of a major business goes quite offensively out of all bounds of sense and good taste, the sudden departure of a chief executive officer should probably be viewed as a consequence of the event, by default. Linda Yaccarino probably wasn't pushed out of "X" (formerly known as Twitter) after its artificial-intelligence chatbot, Grok, lurched into a fascist-praising, antisemitic mode. There's an excellent chance she got fed up and quit. ■ A reasonable person probably would quit under the circumstances, given that the CEO is plainly overshadowed by the non-CEO majority owner. Elon Musk joked about the situation even before she was hired, tweeting, I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" Not a very good job listing. ■ A reasonable person, though, might also have avoided being in a position to lead an organization with a company mouthpiece over which they have no control. As the owner has gone about touting how great and "significantly" improved the uncontrolled chatbot is, the CEO has been hostage to whatever data set was used to train it. ■ Warren Buffett once advised, "Culture has to come from the top and be consistent." That cannot be the case when company culture is being publicly shaped in the voice of unhinged hate and offensiveness. No rational person would take the newly-open seat at X. It's going to remain much too hot for a while.
July 8, 2025
Some things you just cannot outsource
People who possess real expertise typically stand out to those who themselves know what they're talking about. It doesn't require a lot of preening among a knowledgeable audience; most people are able to recognize authoritative voices within their own domains. ■ On the opposite side, nothing is more predictable than finding people with no particular expertise who are extremely quick to adopt new fads as areas in which to claim expertise. Who can forget the rise of "social media experts", "life coaches", and "personal branding consultants" a few years ago? Where are these lackluster posers today? ■ The latest iteration of this phenomenon is the artificial intelligence evangelist. These are the people who turn to social media tools, trying to establish themselves as authorities with praiseworthy insights on the use of AI -- often positioning themselves as having discovered new innovations of which no one has ever before conceived. ■ The problem with these "tech bros" is that they so often grasp for shortcuts that they overlook enormous flaws in reasoning. A momentary fad currently surrounds the idea of using artificial intelligence to summarize full-length books, with at least one adopting a patently ridiculous claim about "reading" 100 books a day with the help of AI-generated summaries. (That particular individual may have been attempting a tongue-in-cheek gag, but the proliferation of "book summarizer" chat bots suggests that at least some people believe in the concept.) ■ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote in his excellent book, "Flow", that "A person can feel pleasure without any effort, if the appropriate centers in his brain are electrically stimulated, or as a result of the chemical stimulation of drugs. But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity." ■ To interact with a thought and wrestle with a book, to contextualize a text and consider its ramifications in depth and in real-time, is to experience a written manuscript. To skip the experience is to gain nothing more than the superficial trappings of deeper meaning. ■ Certainly, some things can be gained from summaries, just as students have long relied on cheat sheets and Cliffs Notes to memorize just enough to pass poorly-constructed tests. But the difference remains that of "consumer" versus "learner". A consumer grasps briefly, then moves along, while a learner incorporates the material into a larger array of knowledge. "LinkedIn grifters" may profit from monetizing tips for the lazy in the short run, but only the learners will reap dividends in the long run.
The stupidest possible reboot of "Pygmalion"
People are using ChatGPT to flirt online, then finding themselves with nothing charming to say in real life
July 7, 2025
Fakes and frauds are a growing problem
Subterfuge has a history dating back to the Trojan horse more than 3,000 years ago. As a tactic, it anything but new. But one thing about deception is modestly different today than in the past: Whereas not that long ago, it could be difficult to piece together the trappings of deception, today the Internet and sophisticated manufacturing technologies make it possible to impersonate innumerable roles with ease. ■ Unfortunately, these conditions have led to everything from fraudulent text messages posing as warnings from the DMV to criminal impersonations of Federal officers. Where bad people find openings, they should be expected to enter. This is the essence of what is known as "social engineering": The manipulation of people's perceptions and expectations through the use of intentional techniques. ■ It has always been important for government officials to behave in accordance with established laws and policies. But it has never been more important for them to be rigidly by-the-book when it comes to representing themselves clearly and transparently -- and, perhaps above all, verifiably. ■ Some agencies have begun to recognize the importance of verifiability, like police departments that acknowledge that pulling over immediately for an unmarked police car may not be safe. But many others have a long way to go. Law enforcement officers should readily share badge numbers. Tax agencies should still send statements through the mail on printed letterhead. Websites should be kept up so that details can be verified without using unreliable social media tools. ■ Deception isn't new, so nobody in any position of significance has any excuse for ignoring the need to counteract it. As the tools and resources available to wrongdoers get better, people of influence have to work even harder to make sure that their own authenticity can be checked. The problem isn't going away.
The Merriam-Webster social media team has taken a Fast Company writer to task for using "micro-retirement" as a substitute word for "vacation". It's adorable when children "discover" things everyone knows and make up words to describe them. The charm is long gone by the time one turns 18.
July 6, 2025
Dramatic cuts to portions of the Federal government -- like a likely 40% reduction in the IRS workforce and nearly 20% reductions at NOAA -- have been implemented via both executive actions and the passage of a large tax bill through Congress. Whether those cuts will prove to be prudent or foolhardy remains to be seen. Likewise, whether they prove to be lasting remains to be seen. They are, however, generally here to stay for at least a year or more to come. ■ Under these conditions, it becomes more important than at any time in living memory for people of goodwill and good intentions to join, identify with, and engage in the professional (and quasi-professional) organizations within their areas of expertise. Nearly everyone has at least some subject matter on which they are specialized and can speak with some degree of authority. ■ Workforce reductions at the Federal level are likely to provoke a coming absence of regulatory and statutory guidance on important matters. On some of those matters, state and local governments will still need to know what represents the state of the art. Private-sector actors, like businesses and non-profit organizations, will also need access to the best possible advice. ■ As a country, we have grown accustomed to much of this guidance coming from the Federal government. In some cases, we may have become too reliant. In others, we may come to regret its absence. But in either case, good people need to step forward in a professional or semi-professional capacity to help advise the public as to what's best. ■ We will need expertise from technology experts and engineers, accountants and economists, transportation planners and air traffic controllers. This input has always been useful, but across many domains, the need for thoughtful input from societies dedicated to educational and research activities has almost certainly never been greater. ■ Not every occupation is a profession -- professionals, to be precise, have specialized knowledge and subscribe to some form of ethical code that requires them to put the public interest ahead of self-interest, as when dentists encourage the use of fluoride (a clear case of argument against self-interest). ■ But many occupations have organizations that act mainly to advance the state of the art rather than to line the pockets of their members, and these are the organizations needed most right now. We may even benefit most from a robust set of overlapping and sometimes even competitive organizations (like the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association), since competition often has a sharpening effect, and because the resulting joint statements among them often strengthen the cases being made. ■ The ecosystem for good institutions should be lively and well-populated. Increasing complexity is an irreversible factor in most disciplines, and our private activities ought to reflect the importance of honing expert opinions in all of those fields. The first step is for as many good people as possible to get involved wherever they have the best judgment to offer.
July 5, 2025
An enormous flash flood in central Texas has led to a heartbreaking number of deaths, numbering at least in the dozens and including children lost from summer camps along a river basin. ■ Much of the shock follows the nearly unthinkable rate of rise on the Guadalupe River. One atmospheric scientist identifies the rainfall behind the flooding as a once-in-1,000-year event. ■ A scientist at the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service, who issued one of the forecasts the day before warning of flash flooding to come, has already begun unpacking what happened meteorologically and how they attempted to offer advance notice to the public, but it's evident that intensification took place that almost certainly goes beyond what could have been warned with precision. ■ We would be in grave error to ignore the signs that storms over land may be subject to similar kinds of rapid intensification already widely recognized as a problem for hurricane forecasting. It's not a problem for tropical locations alone, either: A storm over southern Iowa caused a dangerous 6" rain total not even two weeks ago. ■ Much more scientific research is in order -- research that has few likely sources of funding other than the public. And the same goes for timely warning systems: We need an institution dedicated to advising and protecting the public, no matter where and without regard as to whether the advice can be monetized. ■ That's what we are supposed to get from NOAA and its various offices and services. Those duties are quite certain to become even more important for the foreseeable future, not less, and if we as the public expect those duties to be fulfilled, we had better realize our part in furnishing the resources to pay for them.
July 4, 2025
Independence Day is the year every good American should re-read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety: At around 1,300 words, it's shorter than some people take to share a sourdough recipe on their cooking blogs. ■ The Declaration is worth an annual re-reading if for no other reason than to remind us that the most important word between a person and their government is the word "No". Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Livingston, and Sherman didn't draft a statement complaining of material things they wanted from England. They instead wrote mainly of things the Royal government did to them, unjustly, which they wanted to stop. ■ It's a laundry list that remains easy to read in plain English even today: "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power." "He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither". "He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people." "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world". "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences". ■ The very first Congress had one word in mind above all others: "No." The government in power was doing them wrong, and they withdrew their consent. Government doesn't exist to extend the benefits of the privileged. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed", to secure "certain unalienable Rights", including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". ■ Security means saying "no" to those who would take those things away. It means saying "no" to behavior that echoes the offenses of King George III. And it means unapologetically saying "no" to encroachments on life, liberty, and the treasured pursuit of happiness.
July 3, 2025
An account filing war dispatches under the username Kate from Kharkiv reveals a moment of deep frustration over a reversal of American promises to send defensive missiles to Ukraine: "I'm expected to be polite. Nice. Tamed. Because technically, my anger won't help us. It won't convince more people or governments to support Ukraine. But know this: war comes when you least expect it. We didn't believe it would come for us. There was no point in it, but it came." ■ There is no owner's manual for life, but wisdom lies in training around pattern recognition. That's always been one of our species's evolutionary advantages, and it's a skill that our brains are well-primed to develop. That training can come from many different disciplines -- there are useful patterns to be discovered in math, language, music, and elsewhere. But it should be obvious that human history is one of the most wealthy sources. ■ During the early stages of World War II, Winston Churchill offered this admonition: "An effort must be made to shake off the mental and moral prostration to the will and initiative of the enemy from which we suffer." A threat had long been visible to anyone who was willing to see it, and finally it came for Britain (and later, for the United States). Looking away didn't deny the threat its power. ■ It would be stupid to look away once more: Not because Russia poses the same threat as the one that endangered Britain in 1940, but because it's undeniably part of a pattern that echoes the old one. Lives of innocent people are being sacrificed because there are madmen in the world, and no amount of looking away will deprive them of their power. ■ "Kate from Kharkhiv" is trying to send us a contemporaneous warning. Churchill sends a warning from the past. It is up to us in the present to have the wisdom to recognize patterns before it is too late.
July 1, 2025
Steadiness is one of the most vital but unloved virtues. The whole structure of civilization quietly depends upon institutions that fulfill expected roles with consistency and without complaint for an indefinite period of service. ■ Imagine, for a moment, a world in which the Mayo Clinic gave up on its position as the medical destination of last resort and instead became a spa for hair transplants and cosmetic surgery. There is no law, statute, or even binding contractual obligation requiring Mayo to remain altriustically focused on care for difficult cases. Yet its steadiness in this regard is invaluable. ■ We miss steadiness when it is gone. When vital institutions wobble from the inside -- or when they are mortally wounded by external forces -- the world is injured by their absence. But it is hard to rise to their defense in a crisis because we often have little or no practice in doing so. Why would we? ■ What we can do is stand for steadiness categorically: Not by being unrepentant defenders of the status quo merely for its own sake, but by appreciating the many complex ways in which things interact and insisting on caution whenever anyone tries to slash and burn their way through institutions (public or private) merely for disruption's sake. ■ A temperamental conservatism (that is, a preservative sense of caution) is necessary far more often than not, as is a respect for good custodianship. Just like accounting and finance and marketing are recognized as disciplines within the realm of business and nonprofit management, so too should we recognize the steady maintenance of useful institutions as a unique discipline. ■ If there can be degrees in innovation and entrepreneurship, there ought to be comparable degrees in responsible custodianship. If some are going to study environmental sustainability in public policy, shouldn't others concentrate on institutional sustainability in public service? A chronic eagerness to change, whether by growth or by cutbacks, isn't a symptom of systemic health.
Gambling losses shouldn't be tax deductions
Losses are the expected price of admission to gambling -- no different from, say, paying a cover charge at a bar. If you win $1000 in a karaoke contest, you should pay taxes on the winnings. It's a lucky windfall. You should not get to deduct all the cover charges you've ever paid.
Electrification, plus a shift to de-carbonized sources of electricity, remains the most likely answer to our climate problem. Graphs showing that per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are plateauing and the price of clean electricity is falling tend to sustain that optimism.
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