I think that we are dumbing down pretty much all education. I am noticing a trend toward mediocrity in most every subject, with written and verbal skills being the most obvious, as we use and see them in action every day. In terms of written and spoken word, it’s not only a case of people using vernacular, as I see a similar pattern of mediocrity in communication across social and economic groups. I can’t tell you how many people I have worked with to help them improve their written communication skills at work. As a business analyst and project manager, I know the power of effective communication and I have noticed that younger people are coming out of university with insufficient skills for the workplace. Are parents failing to work with their kids to make sure they learn from an early age? Yep. Are schools failing to teach students more liberal skills like writing and speech in preference for easily quantified skills like math and reading comprehension? Yep. In general, we are not teaching how to communicate well or how to think critically and our country will suffer for this deficit. I don’t like sounding like an old fart bemoaning the shortcomings of the younger generation, but what I’m seeing is not making me feel good about this culture’s future.
Are these people just plain insane? Hurricanes are a vital part of the atmospheric and oceanic environments. They are gigantic engines that help drive both systems. True that they are destructive and lethal, however the bone headed humans can actually mitigate both by not building in areas that are decimated by hurricanes. Hey, I have a brilliant idea, how about humans develop strategies and technologies that help them cope with hurricanes rather than trying to short circuit the very natural systems that preserve our planet.
And yes, I know about hurricanes. I live in Houston and am very familiar with the destruction that was delivered to the Bolivar peninsula and upper bay. I am also a proponent of not rebuilding human habitations on the peninsula. As much as I love that area and have fond memories of going there on vacation, I understand that there are some things you should not mess with and mother nature is on the top of my list.
Here's my take on it. Ok, surfing a little when you're brain has become mush is a standard outlet for me and the people that work for me. We work in Texas in a company with an "acceptable use" clause in our employment conditions that says we'll only use the net for work related things. Fortunately, I manage the web group...but I digress...Sure, you're cheating your company when you spend what should be work hours surfing the net. But you're also using company resources in terms of bandwidth. If every person at my company started spending just a few minutes a day working on their My Space or Live Journal or something else, it could and would seriously degrade our overall system's capability to cope with legitimate business traffic. THAT'S different from reading the newspaper and using the phone. I guess the judge didn't think about that.
Hi, I went to my optomitrist with a similar question. He recommended the new Accuvues. They are MUCH more hydrated than the old ones and he assured me that I would notice the difference. He was right. I spend about 10 hours a day staring into a screen and I have rather dry eyes anyway. With the new Accuvues, I have significantly fewer problems than I did with the older Accuvues. I have been known to wear these new ones 16 hour at a stretch without experiencing problems. I do not ever sleep in them, although you're supposed to be able to. My eyes don't handle that well. Also, you really have to be good about retiring the lenses at the appropriate intervals. The older they get, the less comfy they are. By the time they're reaching the end of the recommended wear duration, you're ready to let those babies go. By all means, get a pair of these as a trial and give em a whirl. They may be just right for you.
You mean who will monitor the monitors? Well, then one must ask who will monitor the monitors of the monitors.
All kidding aside, when will our government, heck people in general, realize that you cannot stop the thoughts and speech of others. You can mitigate the repercussions, but you cannot force people to think and speak a certain way. Russian tried and failed. China is still trying and failing, the US is trying and failing.
They're very difficult to fix. I work in an IT department for a company with our business people saying much the same thing. We in the IT organization get to feeling very beat up over it. The sad truth is that we have several problems. 1) We are not an IT business, so the IT department is seen by upper management as a cost center and a drain on net revenue, not an asset to be nurtured. 2) Given that upper management doesn't understand IT, they expect to be able to run a 24/7/365 shop on a shoe string budget. 3)The business team and management don't understand that detailed analysis and requirements gathering are essential to project success. They honestly think they can ask IT to give them something "kind of like this" and we'll be able to deliver. All this has resulted in low, low morale and a very high turn-over rate.
My company has made several attempts to get things right, but time after time, upper management has stopped the momentum by getting aggravated at escalating costs and lengthening time lines. They fire the guys making the headway and charge the remaining IT staff to "get to work" with reduced discovery and reduced budget, thus resulting in bad results.
All that said, here is what I'd tell you. 1)Be sure your company (at all levels) understands that good IT is an investiment in time and money. 2) Be sure that upper management and the business team understand that they are IT owners too. The success of a project is dependent upon the non-IT sponsors just as much as it is on IT. 3) Always do good up front requirement and/or service level agreement definition. 4) Always have an open dialog between IT and the business. Get the folks communicating and feeling like one big team, rather than "Us Guys" and "Those Guys". After all, you all work for the same company, and therefore the same goal.
I would have my home set up so that I could access any media from any room in the house. The place would be full of flat panel screens that could be used for viewing videos, movies, or art. I would have ceiling mounted screens or projection systems so that the ceilings of my rooms could display sunny skies on rainy days, star fields, or alien sunsets. I would have a security system that could recognize people and animals that should be there by biometrics or movement. I would also have a kitchen that was wired for easy retrieval of my recipes as well as one that could help me start meals before I was home. Lastly, I would ensure that I could access all of my home settings and data remotely via wireless device.
As with so many arguments in society and science, people almost always need to choose one side or the other. In the evolutionary theory debates, the battle between the gradual change camp and the punctuated equilibrium camp has been going on for a long long time. As an antro major, we discussed both ideas in class, but really never talked about "what if it's both". The idea that change is always gradual has its merits in that biology is always trying little experiments in adaptation (e.g. mutations). Most don't work, but some get to hang around and eventually get expressed rather regularly in a population. Then, under a specific stressor, those organisms with that trait suddenly have an advantage over their brethren. The ones without this nifty trait die off leaving the ones with the trait. This gets seen as a sudden adaptation in the fossil record, even though the development of the trait was gradual. In general, biology doesn't work fast enough to respond to rapid environmental stressors. Biology of different organisms work along the same time lines as the organism's reproductive cycles. Bacteria can change more quickly than apes because bacteria reproduce much more quickly, but relative to the organisms themselves, the changes are slow.
You know, I remember when Texas was the free thinking, free speaking, maverick state. Now it's the laughing stock of the country. I am a native Texan and miss the days when Texas was a respected and admired place to live. I blame George Bush and the gigantic increase in influence of the mega churches built on a foundation of greed and a culture centered around charismatic narrow minded leaders. Most of the native Texans I know really want government out of thier personal lives. I'm not sure where the busy body types who like these kinds of ideas and politicians come from. Maybe they're alien invaders bent on taking over Texas so when Elvis comes back from his homeworld, there will be a state full of agreeable sheeple to serve him peanut butter and bacon sandwiches. I shudder to think they're native born.
I don't think that the issue is necessarily with management. It's with our litigious society that allows spurious lawsuits to come to trial. If a company has due cause to terminate an employee, they should be able to do so as long as the reasons are clearly documented. They should not have to worry that they'll get sued and that an overly sympathetic, well picked jury won't feel sorry for the nice, hardworking minority person who got canned, even though their termination decision was based on the same criteria as the white guy that got canned the week before.
Society as a whole has to apply consistent, reasonable standards to all decisions. Unfortunately, society is flawed and will never do so. We just have to do our best to mitigate the unreasonable nature of society.
I have to agree. It is nicer in a job interview to be a "hidden" ethnic, religious, or social minority like Jewish, Mormon, or gay. People who have skin colors other than a nice rosy pink face the "will they judge me for who I am" issue every day. So do the physically different. Heck, so do women. You can't really go in for a job dressed like a drag king and expect to be evaluated like a guy. As a pagan (hidden religious minority) woman (visible minority) in IT, I have to approach a job opportunity with the idea that I am the best person for the job no matter what my religion, sex, or political outlook for that matter. If an employer thinks less of me for who I am, that employer is a shifty and untrusting person at heart anyway. Dont' want to work there, not me.
You're definitely right. There's an old saying "What you find depends on what you're looking for." I think that even scientists are victims of their own predefined notions of what is possible and what is not.
I think it's wonderful that people are constantly reminded that there is nothing is impossible.
For shame. As an Anthro major and former lab tech, I can attest to the fact that no alcohol is ever turned down. But, it was a nice capper to your undergrad career.
It would be lovely if those crafty engineers could come up with a way to harness the ambient heat in our attics, plus the heat put out by our fridges and other apliances. It is true that here in deep S.E. Texas we don't have to worry so much about heating our homes, but heating water is a constant need. It's generally so hot down here in the summers, you have to change clothes and shower at least twice a day. Now, if someone could come up with a really efficent air conditioner that uses the cooling power of the Earth, that would be golden for us east Texans.
1)Get rid of standardized tests as mandated by G.W. Bush administration. Here in Tx, it has created a teaching culture based on teaching for the test.
2)Reintroduce the Socratic method. Thinking skills are not inherant, they're learned.
3)Emphasize communication skills. If you can't communicate, you're sunk
4)Emphasize learning through experimentation. Discovery is always better than learning by rote.
5)Have very high standards for teacher's skills and knowledge. If they don't know it, they can't teach it.
6)Pay teachers enough to attract intelligent and ambitious people.
7)Stop teaching to the lowest common denominator. Expecting great things from people inspires.
8)Provide tutoring for people who need a little extra help
9)Accept the fact that not everyone is going to be a rocket scientist, physicist, or doctor and that's OK
10)Get the parents involved. Kids with parents who care do better in school.
I have read another article about this. What they actually do is inflict a nasty wound on the dog and then perform the stasis procedure, operate to fix the wound, and then re-animate the dog. The whole thing sounds terrifying to me. I'm a big animal lover and this just gives me the willies. But, it sounds promising for saving lives (both animal and human actually) so I'm torn between deploring the cruelty and being intrigued by the science and promise for saving lives.
Like a lot of you all out there, I also have no formal management training. I consider myself a facilitator or maybe a traffic cop for my folk's work. I definitely do not micromanage them. I watch their progress until I either see that they're at an impass they're not telling me about or they come ask me for help. I generally know who will sit on a problem and not come to see me, so I make sure I see them.
Other geeks turned managers here micromanage to the point of taking over their employee's keyboards and typing in code. All of those managers' people hate them and are asking to come join my team...honest.
Most important management point to me is making sure that people know what they need to be doing (requirements), when its supposed to be done (final go-live date), who they're doing it for (business owner) and why it's important to the company (business process). With those answers, they're armed to tackle a lot of roadblocks themselves.
I was exposed to the computer world through my boyfriend, who owned the town's only PC. It was a TRS80 with a cassette tape drive. We spent zillions of hours playing text based adventure games and text graphics games. When I finally decided to PROGRAM instead of play, I took a FORTRAN 77 class in college. I passed that course, but didn't want to do any more. Finally, when I was in my mid 20s, I took a job as a graphic artist in a shop that churned our computer based training. As I worked, I realized that the programmers were mucking up my plans with their interpretations of how the lessons I designed should work, so I took up programming in self defense. I haven't looked back. I'm now a manager for a freight company's web development department. Again, I find I'm not coding, but I know I could go back and sometimes wish I'd never left.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that we are dumbing down pretty much all education. I am noticing a trend toward mediocrity in most every subject, with written and verbal skills being the most obvious, as we use and see them in action every day. In terms of written and spoken word, it’s not only a case of people using vernacular, as I see a similar pattern of mediocrity in communication across social and economic groups. I can’t tell you how many people I have worked with to help them improve their written communication skills at work. As a business analyst and project manager, I know the power of effective communication and I have noticed that younger people are coming out of university with insufficient skills for the workplace. Are parents failing to work with their kids to make sure they learn from an early age? Yep. Are schools failing to teach students more liberal skills like writing and speech in preference for easily quantified skills like math and reading comprehension? Yep. In general, we are not teaching how to communicate well or how to think critically and our country will suffer for this deficit. I don’t like sounding like an old fart bemoaning the shortcomings of the younger generation, but what I’m seeing is not making me feel good about this culture’s future.
Are these people just plain insane? Hurricanes are a vital part of the atmospheric and oceanic environments. They are gigantic engines that help drive both systems. True that they are destructive and lethal, however the bone headed humans can actually mitigate both by not building in areas that are decimated by hurricanes. Hey, I have a brilliant idea, how about humans develop strategies and technologies that help them cope with hurricanes rather than trying to short circuit the very natural systems that preserve our planet. And yes, I know about hurricanes. I live in Houston and am very familiar with the destruction that was delivered to the Bolivar peninsula and upper bay. I am also a proponent of not rebuilding human habitations on the peninsula. As much as I love that area and have fond memories of going there on vacation, I understand that there are some things you should not mess with and mother nature is on the top of my list.
Already being done. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/berkshi re/3389493.stm
Here's my take on it. Ok, surfing a little when you're brain has become mush is a standard outlet for me and the people that work for me. We work in Texas in a company with an "acceptable use" clause in our employment conditions that says we'll only use the net for work related things. Fortunately, I manage the web group...but I digress...Sure, you're cheating your company when you spend what should be work hours surfing the net. But you're also using company resources in terms of bandwidth. If every person at my company started spending just a few minutes a day working on their My Space or Live Journal or something else, it could and would seriously degrade our overall system's capability to cope with legitimate business traffic. THAT'S different from reading the newspaper and using the phone. I guess the judge didn't think about that.
Hi, I went to my optomitrist with a similar question. He recommended the new Accuvues. They are MUCH more hydrated than the old ones and he assured me that I would notice the difference. He was right. I spend about 10 hours a day staring into a screen and I have rather dry eyes anyway. With the new Accuvues, I have significantly fewer problems than I did with the older Accuvues. I have been known to wear these new ones 16 hour at a stretch without experiencing problems. I do not ever sleep in them, although you're supposed to be able to. My eyes don't handle that well. Also, you really have to be good about retiring the lenses at the appropriate intervals. The older they get, the less comfy they are. By the time they're reaching the end of the recommended wear duration, you're ready to let those babies go. By all means, get a pair of these as a trial and give em a whirl. They may be just right for you.
You mean who will monitor the monitors? Well, then one must ask who will monitor the monitors of the monitors.
All kidding aside, when will our government, heck people in general, realize that you cannot stop the thoughts and speech of others. You can mitigate the repercussions, but you cannot force people to think and speak a certain way. Russian tried and failed. China is still trying and failing, the US is trying and failing.
They're very difficult to fix. I work in an IT department for a company with our business people saying much the same thing. We in the IT organization get to feeling very beat up over it. The sad truth is that we have several problems. 1) We are not an IT business, so the IT department is seen by upper management as a cost center and a drain on net revenue, not an asset to be nurtured. 2) Given that upper management doesn't understand IT, they expect to be able to run a 24/7/365 shop on a shoe string budget. 3)The business team and management don't understand that detailed analysis and requirements gathering are essential to project success. They honestly think they can ask IT to give them something "kind of like this" and we'll be able to deliver. All this has resulted in low, low morale and a very high turn-over rate.
My company has made several attempts to get things right, but time after time, upper management has stopped the momentum by getting aggravated at escalating costs and lengthening time lines. They fire the guys making the headway and charge the remaining IT staff to "get to work" with reduced discovery and reduced budget, thus resulting in bad results.
All that said, here is what I'd tell you. 1)Be sure your company (at all levels) understands that good IT is an investiment in time and money. 2) Be sure that upper management and the business team understand that they are IT owners too. The success of a project is dependent upon the non-IT sponsors just as much as it is on IT. 3) Always do good up front requirement and/or service level agreement definition. 4) Always have an open dialog between IT and the business. Get the folks communicating and feeling like one big team, rather than "Us Guys" and "Those Guys". After all, you all work for the same company, and therefore the same goal.
I would have my home set up so that I could access any media from any room in the house. The place would be full of flat panel screens that could be used for viewing videos, movies, or art. I would have ceiling mounted screens or projection systems so that the ceilings of my rooms could display sunny skies on rainy days, star fields, or alien sunsets. I would have a security system that could recognize people and animals that should be there by biometrics or movement. I would also have a kitchen that was wired for easy retrieval of my recipes as well as one that could help me start meals before I was home. Lastly, I would ensure that I could access all of my home settings and data remotely via wireless device.
Life results in Death.
Given that, eat well, drink well, be kind, and you'll die when it's time.
I had no idea that many of Steve's relatives worked at Oracle!
As with so many arguments in society and science, people almost always need to choose one side or the other. In the evolutionary theory debates, the battle between the gradual change camp and the punctuated equilibrium camp has been going on for a long long time. As an antro major, we discussed both ideas in class, but really never talked about "what if it's both". The idea that change is always gradual has its merits in that biology is always trying little experiments in adaptation (e.g. mutations). Most don't work, but some get to hang around and eventually get expressed rather regularly in a population. Then, under a specific stressor, those organisms with that trait suddenly have an advantage over their brethren. The ones without this nifty trait die off leaving the ones with the trait. This gets seen as a sudden adaptation in the fossil record, even though the development of the trait was gradual. In general, biology doesn't work fast enough to respond to rapid environmental stressors. Biology of different organisms work along the same time lines as the organism's reproductive cycles. Bacteria can change more quickly than apes because bacteria reproduce much more quickly, but relative to the organisms themselves, the changes are slow.
You know, I remember when Texas was the free thinking, free speaking, maverick state. Now it's the laughing stock of the country. I am a native Texan and miss the days when Texas was a respected and admired place to live. I blame George Bush and the gigantic increase in influence of the mega churches built on a foundation of greed and a culture centered around charismatic narrow minded leaders. Most of the native Texans I know really want government out of thier personal lives. I'm not sure where the busy body types who like these kinds of ideas and politicians come from. Maybe they're alien invaders bent on taking over Texas so when Elvis comes back from his homeworld, there will be a state full of agreeable sheeple to serve him peanut butter and bacon sandwiches. I shudder to think they're native born.
Ok, I'm going to be persnickity here and point out that the fish actually lives on the island of SUMATRA in Indonesia. BBC is also running the article. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4645708 .stm)
I don't think that the issue is necessarily with management. It's with our litigious society that allows spurious lawsuits to come to trial. If a company has due cause to terminate an employee, they should be able to do so as long as the reasons are clearly documented. They should not have to worry that they'll get sued and that an overly sympathetic, well picked jury won't feel sorry for the nice, hardworking minority person who got canned, even though their termination decision was based on the same criteria as the white guy that got canned the week before. Society as a whole has to apply consistent, reasonable standards to all decisions. Unfortunately, society is flawed and will never do so. We just have to do our best to mitigate the unreasonable nature of society.
I have to agree. It is nicer in a job interview to be a "hidden" ethnic, religious, or social minority like Jewish, Mormon, or gay. People who have skin colors other than a nice rosy pink face the "will they judge me for who I am" issue every day. So do the physically different. Heck, so do women. You can't really go in for a job dressed like a drag king and expect to be evaluated like a guy. As a pagan (hidden religious minority) woman (visible minority) in IT, I have to approach a job opportunity with the idea that I am the best person for the job no matter what my religion, sex, or political outlook for that matter. If an employer thinks less of me for who I am, that employer is a shifty and untrusting person at heart anyway. Dont' want to work there, not me.
You're definitely right. There's an old saying "What you find depends on what you're looking for." I think that even scientists are victims of their own predefined notions of what is possible and what is not.
I think it's wonderful that people are constantly reminded that there is nothing is impossible.
For shame. As an Anthro major and former lab tech, I can attest to the fact that no alcohol is ever turned down. But, it was a nice capper to your undergrad career.
It would be lovely if those crafty engineers could come up with a way to harness the ambient heat in our attics, plus the heat put out by our fridges and other apliances. It is true that here in deep S.E. Texas we don't have to worry so much about heating our homes, but heating water is a constant need. It's generally so hot down here in the summers, you have to change clothes and shower at least twice a day. Now, if someone could come up with a really efficent air conditioner that uses the cooling power of the Earth, that would be golden for us east Texans.
1)Get rid of standardized tests as mandated by G.W. Bush administration. Here in Tx, it has created a teaching culture based on teaching for the test. 2)Reintroduce the Socratic method. Thinking skills are not inherant, they're learned. 3)Emphasize communication skills. If you can't communicate, you're sunk 4)Emphasize learning through experimentation. Discovery is always better than learning by rote. 5)Have very high standards for teacher's skills and knowledge. If they don't know it, they can't teach it. 6)Pay teachers enough to attract intelligent and ambitious people. 7)Stop teaching to the lowest common denominator. Expecting great things from people inspires. 8)Provide tutoring for people who need a little extra help 9)Accept the fact that not everyone is going to be a rocket scientist, physicist, or doctor and that's OK 10)Get the parents involved. Kids with parents who care do better in school.
I have read another article about this. What they actually do is inflict a nasty wound on the dog and then perform the stasis procedure, operate to fix the wound, and then re-animate the dog. The whole thing sounds terrifying to me. I'm a big animal lover and this just gives me the willies. But, it sounds promising for saving lives (both animal and human actually) so I'm torn between deploring the cruelty and being intrigued by the science and promise for saving lives.
Like a lot of you all out there, I also have no formal management training. I consider myself a facilitator or maybe a traffic cop for my folk's work. I definitely do not micromanage them. I watch their progress until I either see that they're at an impass they're not telling me about or they come ask me for help. I generally know who will sit on a problem and not come to see me, so I make sure I see them.
Other geeks turned managers here micromanage to the point of taking over their employee's keyboards and typing in code. All of those managers' people hate them and are asking to come join my team...honest.
Most important management point to me is making sure that people know what they need to be doing (requirements), when its supposed to be done (final go-live date), who they're doing it for (business owner) and why it's important to the company (business process). With those answers, they're armed to tackle a lot of roadblocks themselves.
I was exposed to the computer world through my boyfriend, who owned the town's only PC. It was a TRS80 with a cassette tape drive. We spent zillions of hours playing text based adventure games and text graphics games. When I finally decided to PROGRAM instead of play, I took a FORTRAN 77 class in college. I passed that course, but didn't want to do any more. Finally, when I was in my mid 20s, I took a job as a graphic artist in a shop that churned our computer based training. As I worked, I realized that the programmers were mucking up my plans with their interpretations of how the lessons I designed should work, so I took up programming in self defense. I haven't looked back. I'm now a manager for a freight company's web development department. Again, I find I'm not coding, but I know I could go back and sometimes wish I'd never left.