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Wednesday,
February 3, 2010 I have a medical
appointment in a few minutes. More when I get back. Meanwhile, here's an
interesting letter in response to an item in yesterday's mail:
Stereo "Burn-in"
"Odd, I always expected our Tektronix scopes and
HP(olden times)/ Agilent (nowadays) microwave network analyzers,
spectrum analyzers and signal generators to meet specs right out of the
box. And they did, too."
Of course they did. You can bet that Tektronix, HP,
and Agilent (and any other instrument company) has the instruments they
produce "pre-burned in" as necessary, and calibration-checked before they
ship. But the production volume of high-end audio components is so small
that they just can't afford to do such a long "pre-burn". They probably
"burn-in" for 24 hours, and ship.
And speaking as an analytical chemist, anybody who
relies on ANY instrument without periodic traceable standardization is
just aching for a lawsuit.
Duane
And of course not only is he right, but in the early days of the
computer revolution one of the features of quality S-100 systems like
Godbout's CompuPro was that they were burned in for a week before
shipping. Of course that was largely for reliability purposes. Most
electronics fail in the first couple of days of use if they are going to
fail at all; after that they are good for several years, with increasing
probability of failure as time goes on.
Which reminds me that this is true of disk drives: if they work long
enough for you to be using them they are good for a couple of years, after
which backup becomes increasingly important as time goes on. Google has
enormous experience of this as do of course drive makers. If your system
is more than three years old, the hard drive is on track for failure in
the next couple of years. Some last longer, of course, but you can't count
on it.
Note the last paragraph in Duane's letter. It's important to keep in
mind when you consider climate models. Recall that these are supposed to
be looking at temperature values for at least a hundred years. There is no
single instrument that has been recording temperatures in the same place
and under the same conditions for all that time. It is especially critical
that these instruments be calibrated properly if we are to compare 1895 to
2005 -- and they haven't been. There are models of how to model these
temperatures...
And now I am off for the morning. It's not critical.
===================
What should we call people of IQ 70
and below? And is it an insult to say that we really do not want people of
IQ 70 and below to be party leaders, Congresscritters, such?
When I was brought up we had legal terms: moron, mental age
of 12 or below; imbecile, mental age higher than idiot and lower than moron
(mental ages varied by state, but generally about mental age 6 - 9), and
idiot, which generally meant hopelessly retarded. The terms were widely
used, both as epithets -- "He's a moron! No he's not he's an idiot!" -- and
as actual diagnostic terms used in treatment and insurance payments. Over
time those were abandoned for "Educable Mentally Retarded (EMR)", "Trainable
Mentally Retarded" (TMR) , and Severely Mentally Retarded. Those diagnostics
also had legal effect and school subsidies were based on them; there were
EMR and TMR classes and even schools. Perhaps there still are, but I haven't
heard of them lately.
Rom Emmanuel reportedly said something to the effect that
Democrats were acting like a bunch of retards, and today's talk radio shows
are full of discussion of this. Emmanuel apologized to retarded people,
causing Rush Limbaugh to wonder if he ought not apologize to Democrats. This
got Limbaugh caught in an odd circle of who insulted whom, and the shouting
continues.
All of which got me wondering: just what is going on? Is it
an insult to call an argument or a speech or an artistic work "idiotic"? If
I say that a particularly nonsensical statement sounds like the work of an
idiot, who has been offended? It's unlikely to be idiots: they don't
comprehend the notion of idiocy. Still, we do know people who are "slow",
"afflicted", "simple", who are smart enough to know they aren't like
everyone else, and while few of them actually watch the news or read
magazines, perhaps some of them find references to mental retardation a
painful reminder of their unfortunate condition. Does this mean we must
never discuss the problems? There really is a difference between normal
children and the Educable Mentally Retarded, and moreover, the only way to
see that normal kids and EMR kids get the same education results is to
retard the education of the normal children -- just as the only way to get
the same education outcome among well below normal and well above normal
children is to hold back the smart kids. The only way to be sure that no
child is left behind is to hamper those who would otherwise get ahead. Kurt
Vonnegut's 1961 masterpiece short story "Harrison Bergeron" predicts the
consequences of that. If you haven't read this story, you should. It's not
very long.
(Aside: The story is easily available on line, but I am not
sure any on-line copy is authorized. Under the copyright law at the time it
was written it would become public domain in 2017; much later now. Finding
an authorized copy outside of a public library is more difficult, unless
you want to order a collection of stories. My cursory scan shows that the
collections containing the story are out of print but used copies are
available. Whether you buy a used copy or read it in the library, neither
the author's estate nor the publisher will get any of your money, of
course.)
Equality of outcome in education is impossible, and attempts
to bring it about are disastrous. The simple fact is that bright people
contribute more to the economy than the less gifted. They always have. The
justification for compulsory education paid for by tax money -- compulsorily
collected money -- is that it is an investment. This is so only if the
education pays off, and the only way education pays off is if the bright
kids are educated to go do innovative things, the normal kids are partly
educated but largely trained to learn useful skills like reading and writing
and arithmetic and some basic skills like mechanics and home economics, and
all the kids are trained to be good citizens. This ideal isn't often
realized, but it's a better goal than the nonsense about "every child
deserves a world class university prep education", which is never going to
be achieved; worse, the attempt at universal university prep education makes
it pretty near impossible for anyone to get a university prep education.
Moreover, most of us know this, yet we live in a world where
we not only can't change course, but we can't even talk about the problem.
The fact is that idiots, imbeciles, and morons do exist, and they are not
going to get a world class university prep education no matter how hard you
try, and "mainstreaming" them will inevitably make it a lot more difficult
to give anyone a world class university prep education. I realize that's an
offensive statement. Many things in this world are offensive; but ignoring
offensive ("inconvenient"?) truths is not a winning strategy. I doubt anyone
can seriously challenge the facts, and I restate them: idiots, imbeciles,
and morons exist, and no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we spend
on their education, they are not going to get a world class university
prep education.
If you can accept that, then you can see where we are going:
half the children are below average. The lower half includes the idiots,
imbeciles, and morons, but it also includes quite a few more, none of whom
are going to get a world class university prep education no matter how hard
we try. Jaime Escalante managed to teach calculus to surprising numbers of
kids the system had previously given up on, but he never attempted to teach
Advanced Placement math to all the children in his school. His story is
worth study. Moreover, there are many success stories of "ordinary people";
to say that in general those of IQ under, say, 105 are not going to get a
world class university prep education is not to say that they can't get a
decent combination of education and training in useful skills, or that they
won't be far more successful in life than the kids who do get a world class
university prep education. Indeed, a world class university prep education
prepares you for a university education, not for getting on with one's life.
There are a lot of paths to success that don't involve universities,
colleges, or even community colleges, but a world class university prep
education doesn't do much of a job for preparing you for those paths.
Of course those who do get a good university prep education
and then go on to university generally end up far more successful than those
who don't; but this is just a way of restating that most of the innovations
in this world come from the best and the brightest, which is to say from the
upper quarter and above of the bell curve. Note that "brightest" doesn't
mean wealthiest, and the great equalizer used to be public education for
all; now, the wealthy go to private schools where they don't have
mainstreamed Educable Mentally Retarded and the teachers aren't spending all
their time trying to get some of the failures up to barely passing while
neglecting the bright kids. Jaime Escalante found some university class kids
in his barrio, but he's long gone now as is his program.
All of which ought to be obvious. My point is that when we
decide there are topics we can't talk about, we may be making a more serious
mistake than we know. I don't like being offensive to the mentally retarded,
but they do exist, and their existence has consequences. Those consequences
have to be discussed in any forum of public policy. Fortunately few mentally
retarded people will read this site. I regret that some readers are parents
of retarded children, but that doesn't change the situation.
It's time for lunch. I'll continue this another time. The
point of this long view is that I think we can all agree that if compulsory
tax supported education is to be justified as anything other than a jobs
program, we cannot have a one education fits all system. Sometimes, as in
the country schools I attended in the 1930's, there may be no choice: we had
two grades to each room, and it was the only school, public or private,
available. I made do; but fortunately I had more choices in high school, and
I did get a world class university prep education, and was able to go to a
good university without acquiring lifetime debts to do it.
We need to provide the opportunity for a university prep
education to every student; but we also need to provide something else (not I
did not say short of that, although that phrase is worth discussion) for
those who aren't going to profit from a university education. If we can
agree that the system we have can't work, we can start looking at what
might.
===============
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