Khan, Calculus, and SWAT Mail 682 20110726

Mail 685 Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Do not miss the item on the Khan Academy

Birth of Fire by Jerry Pournelle is now available for Nook as well as Amazon.

Government Job Security

"In the Los Angeles School District some 7 teachers have been dismissed for incompetence in a dozen years."

And in case you missed the story last week about Federal job security:

"The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-07-18-fderal-job-security_n.htm

Karl

It’s pretty well the same in most school districts. The purpose of the education unions is to protect all the members. That should be no surprise: but it should also be the objective of the school boards and funding authorities to protect the children, not bad teachers. Teacher competence is difficult to rate except at the ends of the spectrum: that is, it’s never very hard to determine who are the 10% worst teachers, and it’s never very hard to determine who are the 10% best. It would be a lot cheaper to fire the worst 10% and divide their salaries among the 10% best. The schools would be more effective, and there would be fewer legal expenses. You’d think someone might try that.

WH: US in imminent threat of default

Jerry,

It’s clear to me, that such a pronouncement from the Whitehouse is nothing short of an out and out declaration of a joint-political suicide pact. This would be a perfect storm cover for our numerous enemies to give us a pearl harbor up the wazoo, especially with a POTUS who wants to take his football and go home. This, coupled with a speaker of the house who seems to be a poster child for mental illness. ( or should that be speaker of animals, ala’ RingWorld?)

We are long past reaping the harvest. In the words of Robert Heinlein, we are now going to "eat what is set before us" I always knew that, like ancient Rome, the USA was destined to follow that path, however, Rome took centuries, we are doing it in my short half-century lifetime.

Mark Bender

Perhaps it is not as bad as all that, but we are certainly moving in that direction. Do understand that Emperors are usually “friends of the people”, not old conservatives. On the other hand, Julius Caesar rather clearly had good intentions, perhaps to restructure the Republic which was still in dire straits. Impossible to know. Caesar was generous to his enemies. His friend and general Mark Anthony was not. And Augustus allowed Cicero to be on the Proscription List.

When the Republic collapses here, political enemies are more likely to be imprisoned for lieing to a Federal officer than to be executed. Or of course for tax fraud.

Ms Noonan’s opinion

Hello Jerry,

"She seems to believe that Obama is sincere but misguided. I hope she is right. "

Of course you HOPE that she is right. As do I.

However, I cannot possibly imagine that, after watching Obama and his handlers in action for more than two years, you BELIVE that she is right.

I realize that it is unnecessary to ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity and incompetence, but, given the facts as we know them, Mr. Occam and his razor pretty much jump competent malevolence to the head of the ‘What the heck are they doing?’ line.

Naturally malevolence only applies if you believe that turning our country into a Marxist/communist/socialist/fascist/tyrannical dictatorship (At least ONE of the preceding applies to EVERY policy of the Obama administration.), as the Obamunists have been doing 24/7/365 since the day they took office, is evidence of malevolence. Unfortunately, many, maybe a majority, of our fellow citizens do not. And therein lies the problem.

Bob Ludwick

I think you are insufficiently schooled in the undergraduate logic of the Liberals, most of whom genuinely think they are saving mankind. True believers seldom believe they are malicious.

Subject: Who the President pays

Jerry, you wrote, "Obama is making it clear that he prefers Bunny Inspectors to paying the Army." Of course he does. If President Obama is anything, he’s a politician, and he’s going to make sure his people get paid before anybody else. The Bunny Inspectors know that they owe their jobs him and his party, and they’ll vote Democrat come hell or high water to make sure they keep them. The Army, on the other hand, tends to be conservative and Republican. Few, if any of them are likely to vote for him under any circumstances. Of course, doing everything he can to help them, their families and the millions of vets in this country might buy him a few votes, but that’s not how he thinks. If they’re not part of his core constituency, he hasn’t the slightest interest in pleasing them, because he can’t see the long-term benefits.

Joe

The question is whether we can get to more elections, and who gets to vote in them.

NASA SWAT

Jerry,

I’m informed that the NASA SWAT Team at least has a verifiable valuable mission in terms of protecting shipments of hazardous cargo and protecting very high profile public events (e.g. Shuttle lau…well, perhaps, never mind now) from terrorist attack.

http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/swat_feature.html

I first learned about them in an article on their weaponry (hardly remarkable) in a gun magazine a couple of years ago.

Whether that mission is better contracted to other law enforcement or to private security, further deponent sayeth not.

Note the following on Google search:

"Department of the Interior SWAT" turns up numerous comments (mostly blog posts but some credible sources including washingtonpost.com and rushlimgaugh.com) about Interior Department SWAT teams supposedly deployed to the Gulf during the oil spill crisis.

"Department of Agriculture SWAT team" turns up references to such a team from the State government of Ohio, raiding unsanitary farm operations.

"Department of Homeland SWAT Team" turns up reference to DHS training of state and local SWAT teams. There are probably more.

Jim

NASA swat team

Of course they do. Kennedy started gearing up when the first shuttle arrived. I saw brands of sub-machine guns I had never seen before in the hands of our rent a cops. We hired so many sworn officers from around Florida, that the Sherifs started to complain. They were not organized into a an official SWAT team, but a large percentage of them were heavily armed. It’s the Iron Law in action that eventually they would come around to a SWAT team, probably one for each center. You can make a pretty good argument that Kennedy should have something like a SWAT or crisis response team, they were a pretty good terrorist target. HQ on the other hand, not so much.

Of course the joke was, they had all of those guns, but only one bullet. They had to send for the bullet.

Phil=

One might ask whether the Administrator of NASA or any of his deputies has any necessary training or even interest in Constitutional Law, the rights of citizens, or the problems of running a Federal law enforcement agency. We have Senatorial Hearings and Confirmation for a reason: someone should be held accountable. When we have a Federal Case of a Federal armed agent harrassing a citizen and exceeding authority, whose head should roll? I don’t want the Administrator of NASA to be an expert on law and order. I would prefer that he know something about rockets.

Federal law enforcement can generally be contracted to local authorities, who can use the experience and revenue; and if they are not competent there are other measures. As you say, it is the Iron Law in action.

Jerry, I think you should challenge your readers to identify all federal SWAT teams outside of DOD and DOJ.

John from Waterford

Putting a chimney on a Hummer

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20110725.aspx

As a physicist and engineer, my first thought was "Wow, why didn’t I think of that?!" An inspired application of the principle of least resistance.

Steve Chu

As you say.

After Killings, Unease in Norway, Where Few Police Carry Guns – NYTimes.com

Jerry,

Gun Control really works!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/world/europe/26police.html

It is ironic that I’m rereading Half Past Human and The Godwhale by TJ Bass. The Norwegians remind me of Bass’ fictional Nebishes, four toes rather than five, four feet tall, and neutered.

Jim Crawford.

Next we will have a sharps committee to determine who can own kitchen knives?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education

Jerry

How’s this for a switch – you listen to lectures at home, then do your homework with your teacher at school:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/all/1

So Bill Gates’ kids are learning math from this guy, which resulted in a $1.5M gran from Gates and a $2M grant from Google. It’s definitely fascinating.

Ed

= =

And more:

Calculus: an old time alternative, and a new one

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

You have recently written of the need of those American H.S. students learning science, engineering, etc., first to learn mathematics in general, and calculus in particular.

I have two recommendations which may perhaps be useful to filling that need, one an old method, and the other a new one.

The old method can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_Made_Easy

That wikipedia link gives one any number of public domain links to the original book by Silvanus P. Thompson. I believe you have referred to this estimable tome a time or two before. I have found it rather useful myself.

The second, newer, method can be found here:

http://www.khanacademy.org

This is a website developed by a financial wizard with multiple degrees from MIT, who started by putting up YouTube clips to explain Algebra to his cousin, and which has since grown to more than 2300 clips (ten to twenty minutes each), which explain mathematics from arithmetic to linear algebra, differential equations and calculus, and such sundry other matters as biology, physics, economics and finance. A fair appraisal of his website can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_academy

I hope this might be of some help to your readers. These have certainly helped me.

Very truly yours,

Bernard Brandt

Thanks. It is indeed useful. For this with high school graduates: bribe them to go through Calculus Made Easy. Five hundred dollars cash if you get through the book and do all the exercises. It’s a bit like using Mrs. Pournelle’s reading program before they start school to make certain they can read: the public schools may or may not teach them, but reading is too important to be left to strangers. The same is true of the ability to use Calculus for practical matters; it’s useful for the rest of your life. And the Khan Academy is well worth the attention of any student or parent.

And I am not sure what to make of this:

‘Khan’s programmer, Ben Kamens, has heard from teachers who’ve seen Khan Academy presentations and loved the idea but wondered whether they could modify it “to stop students from becoming this advanced.”’

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/all/1>

—

Roland Dobbins

In any event it is worth your attention.

"By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon."

<http://news.discovery.com/space/time-travel-impossible-photon-110724.html>

—–

Roland Dobbins

Niven among others points out that if there is time travel, at some point someone will use time travel to travel back and uninvent it, so there won’t be time travel. And Heinlein had much fun with “All You Zombies”, as did David Gerrold.

‘Some believe that it was built as a dwelling for helpful goblins.’

<http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,druck-775348,00.html>

——

Roland Dobbins

Or perhaps the Dawn Elves…

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