Core Knowledge charter schools vs. Colorado public schools

We're trying to figure out where to send Brody to school.  He's super smart and gifted and we want to make sure he's being challenged and learning to think critically.  So we've been looking into some different charter schools around, including some Core Knowledge options.

Core Knowledge is pitched officially as a liberal (politically speaking) idea, and it seems to have some logical thinking behind it.  Why then are there so many religious schools attaching to it?  And why is it when I do any kind of research on it, I tend to end up hearing rumors of religious involvement, or land in various websites of institutes whose goal is to "bring the gospel to the youth through informative instruction" or the like?

Is Core Knowledge the Intelligent Design of this decade?  Or is the Intelligent Design crowd in process of  hijacking a legitimate educational alternative?  Or am I up too late again?  Why isn't the right way to educate children obvious by now?!

Side note: Apparently this topic is keeping Sully awake at night too... ><

The Shadow Scholar - How to make money helping college kids cheat

Just ran across this article, it's a few months old but fascinating and I guess a little terrifying.  I suppose the scale of operations is what's so astounding

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

Here's an excerpt:

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.

I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I've worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments. 

It's a lengthy read but very thought provoking.  If you have any interest or opinions on the modern educational system in the U.S., definitely check it out.  As far as I'm concerned as an employer, just another reason to not really give a damn about the paper a person waves, and instead look for character and passion.

NetDevil Memories: June 13, 2007: Death of a Printer

This is one of my favorite memories from NetDevil.  When we moved into our new space in 2007, we had two printers from the old office that never quite worked.  As in "PC Load Letter?  What the f*&#! does that mean?!"  So once we got all moved in with some new printers, we took the old ones out back, and went all Office Space on them.

Everybody got a chance to take a couple of whacks at those infernal machines with an assortment of weapons.  Choices ranged from a Black Magic softball bat, a golf club, a hockey stick, and as you can see here Ivan resourcefully brought his Razor scooter into the mix. (pssst Sherland! Untuck your shirt you knob!)

Kedhrin and Brizown tried to hold me back, but the nerd rage could not be contained.  Not to mention all the frustration of playing baseball for 12 years and still absolutely sucking at it...

Satisfying, to say the least.  Although I'm sure the offices behind us got a little uncomfortable seeing this on their new neighbor's first day in the hood.  Tee hee hee!

Darrin has taken the unspeakable challenge

A very impressive rendition of my new favorite little guy from Ry'leh, by Darrin Klein.  Thanks D!

Hey Artist Friends... I Dare you to Draw This!

This thing cannot be described, but it is sometimes called "the chartreuse, velvety spawn of the stars", with "flabby paws" and an "offal quad-head with writhing feathers".  One of the runts of the species of the Elder Ones, Xxggghhr'thulhu stands (well, it's unclear if he/she/it is standing or sitting ever) a mere 15 feet tall and weighs in at only half a metric ton.  Obviously, this puts Xxggghhr'thulhu pretty low on the social totem pole of ancient demonic aliens.  Perhaps that's why Xxggghhr'thulhu has turned into a devout Pastafarian.  One thing is for sure... it's hungry.  It's always hungry.

80% of your wine comes from 20% of your grapes

Heard this great little anecdote from a friend over coffee today.  He said he read somewhere (maybe in a book called "The 4 hour work week"?) that it's a well known fact of life in wine making that 80% of your output comes from 20% of your grapes.  So the real trick is figuring out where those 20% are sitting in your vineyard, prioritizing their fertilization, and keeping them watered above the rest of the crop.  Every year is different so you never know reliably where the 20% is going to be.

So are people and work just like grapes and wine?  I know that I like grapes, and people whine about work, so that lends some plausibility to the idea.

And whatever happened to the California Raisins?  I want to see the E! Inside Story.

Learninating bout Distributating

Today I spent all day trying to get my head around distributed version control.  I've been so entrenched in traditional perforce/svn approaches for a decade I never thought to look around for other solutions.  Thanks to Jake for pointing me at Mercurial/TortoiseHg (via Bitbucket).  For the interested, see http://hginit.com/

I still don't know if it will ultimately be a good jump for dev'ing games on but it got me out of my knowledge comfort zone today and I learned a thing or two.  I can see the potential of solving some serious headaches that are inevitable if you are in the business of software as a service, for example the classic how do we cleanly branch live production builds for bug fixing while at the same time not stomping new development builds and vice versa.   Hey LEGO Universe engineering team, I'm looking your way. :)

Anyway, I love tinkering with new ways of doing things and so I guess it was a good day.

I just want to show random photos with random music

Why is it that still nobody (and I'm looking at the big media boys, MS, Apple, Google) has figured out that all I want to do on my tv and sound system is cycle through the photos of my choice (as in randomly through 10s of thousands) while playing the music of my choice.  Apple TV can kind of do it, but is clunky in prioritizing either the music list or photo set (can't really do both at the same time easily even with iPad remote).  Google TV, at least the logitech revue, pretty much sucks for this.  MS with xbox and media center has been a stagnant cesspool of clunky UI for years (wtf? Windows Home Server doesn't integrate well with media center OR DLNA? what do you think people are using this for MS?).

BTW, thanks Comcast and Motorola and probably the MPAA for HDCP on my DVR that prevents more than 2 downstream HDMI connections from working with the TV signal.  i.e. my logitech revue has to be hooked up on a separate HDMI input straight to the TV with audio on SPDIF, kind of defeating the purpose of a unifying technology when I now have to switch inputs on my TV to go from anything else.  What the hell is the logic in that anyway?  If I really want to copy the HD signal, won't I just plug it in directly to my capture setup if I have to?

Before any net nerds start telling me about their favorite home brew shit, can it.  I'm over 30, have 3 kids and a career, I don't have time to muck around with any linuxy opensourcey bullshit in my free time.  I want a giant corporation to soothe my soul with their seamless execution of the 21st century family vacation slideshow in a tiny little box that makes comforting beeps when I point at it.

Ahhhh.... now that's what blogging is for!  Useless ranting to the great void of the internet who could care less, but you know... I feel a little bit better!