Whistlestop

It's important to read the newspaper, especially the sports page, because you can learn things. Things like the discovery that people with excessive exposure to referee's whistles had an increased tendency toward tinnitus and hearing loss. In particular, those people tend to be the referees themselves, but apparently players of sports with frequent whistles are also at risk.  The sport with the most whistles? Apparently, volleyball. Whoda thunk? If I remember from the Olympics, the thing that seemed to have the most whistles was water polo, where I'm not sure if there's more whistle or non-whistle time.

The other thing that popped out from the article is that the whistles are rated for their decibel level, with the top one tweeting in at 106 decibels. This is a little more than a snowmobile, a tad less than a power saw, and about the same as a being 3 feet from a power mower, a subway train pulling into a station, or a boiler factory. I'd never thought about boiler factories and the I don't know what kind of noises are there, but now I at least know they're loud.

Skiing Vaykay

I'm in Lake Placid, NY right now, for a winter sports-type vacation. This is one of my favorite places on earth, so just being here makes me happy.

One centerpiece of a Lake Placid visit is skiing at Whiteface Mountain. As a ski area, Whiteface is a very mixed bag. Conditions are very unpredictable and there's always a search (shopping, as one gondola-mate called it) for a trail with good snow or even the paces within a given trail with good snow. On the other hand, it's friendly and unslick. I like it there.

Today is the first day of a holiday weekend. It's nice out today and it's supposed to be dreadfully cold tomorrow, so Whiteface is overrun. I managed to get myself up the mountain on the gondola (whose relationship to the traditional Italian gondolas is mysterious to me) and then decided that I would try to stay on the upper part of the mountain for as long a possible.

This requires skiing halfway down from the top and then taking another lift back up. The first time I did this, I went to the summit, Big Whiteface as it's called. I had heard talk that a trail called Upper Cloudspin, a wide, steep expert slope, had very good snow. This happens on that particular slope for a few days each season. The rest of the time the snow all blows off and you're left with a sheet of, if not glare ice, tightly packed ice crystals.

So I'm on the lift thinking about whether or not to take this slope, which I've taken maybe 3 times before over the course of 10 years, and I began weighing the pros and cons. It occurred to me that when I usually do this, part of the process is "Well, what's the worst that can happen?" However, the answer to this is seldom "gruesome injury up to and including painful death," as it was in this case, so I decided to pass.

I still couldn't resist the opportunity to look over the side as I slid past, but in not watching where I was going, I caught a ski on a hose leading to a snowmaker and lost my balance. I started skiing over the top of a guy's skis, which is a major faux pas in these circles, and to keep myself from continuing, off balance, down the slope I was trying to avoid I elected to fall over. I know, it's rare when falling over is the preferred alternative but this was one of those case. The guy who I skied over fell down too. I apologized profusely, to which he only responded, "That probably means you shouldn't be skiing this slope." I replied, "No kidding" and slid away.

The rest of the day was uneventful, though it made it clear to me that I need a lesson or two next time I ski, because I've lost some of my edge, so to speak, after skiing very little the past 2 years. After returning to the hotel room we went to one of my favorite things, The Lake Placid Toboggan Chute and did a couple of runs there. Even though we could have then gone snow tubing, I decided not to go for the sliding-down-frozen-things trifecta, at least for today.

More thoughts on technological change

I was reading an obituary in today's New York Times for a man named John Karlin, who was a pioneer in combining engineering and psychology to create functional design. His most famous contribution (one of many) was the development of the touch-tone phone, and the arrangement of the numbers (the opposite, one might note, of the arrangement on calculators) based on research showing that the our current arrangement minimizes errors.

It reminded me of a class I took on organizational design and decision-making at Wharton, taught by a guy named Russell Ackoff, who was, as I learned mostly from being told by him, a giant in the field of decision sciences. One of the lectures related to the topic of this article by Dr. Ackoff, which talks about the same development from a management point of view. A group of people sitting around a room thinking about what would they want their telephone to be able to do. It's a pretty fascinating story from either angle, especially for something that people take for granted, but when you see something happen from two totally different perspectives, you really get a picture of how potentially difficult important change can be.

The top manager in the Ackoff article is the real hero, for setting up the project in the way that he did, and I remember Dr. Ackoff almost gleefully describing the process and the kinds of developments that came out of it. Even taking cellular phones out of the picture and speaking only about wired phones within the house, the ideas for touch-tone, cordless phones, and caller ID came from these sessions, making it one of the greatest incubators of technological innovation of the 20th century.

This relates directly to what I wrote yesterday, about deciding what you wanted out of the introduction of technology into a classroom setting before actually introducing the technology. Knowing what it is you seek to accomplish is one of the most powerful bits of knowledge you can have, and it continues to amaze me how many people simply do not realize this.

iPads In Education FAQ (AtFAQ?)

Really, these should be called Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, because nobody would read it if it was just questions, But before I start with the Q's, I just want everyone to understand is that everything stated here is based on either exhaustive research or my opinion based on nothing more a house of assumptive cards. All I know is that there isn't enough information to know which is a more valid way to approach the topic. I've done no research, nor do I intend to, but I've known a good bit about technology for a long time, I teach middle school and high school, and I know a decent amount about human behavior. And that'll have to suffice here.

Q. Are iPads a boon or an impediment to education?

Debating the merits of technology in education isn't just a straw man argument, it's a steel cage match for straw men. The answer is yes, no, who the hell knows at this point. The iPad was introduced how long ago? Are we supposed to make long-term decisions based on a product that's been in existence for just barely 3 years? I can tell you that math teachers are still far from unanimous on the best use of calculators, which were introduced over 30 years ago.

So let's ask more specific questions.

Q. Do iPads belong in the classroom?

Here's another unsatisfying answer- yes, no,and who the hell knows at this point? A better question is, is it possible to use iPads in the classroom to good effect? The answer to that is undoubtably yes, but.

Q. How should iPads or similar technology be integrated into the classroom?

A. First of all, I'm not even going to dignify the question of whether or not this should be done. It seems a no brainer, so to speak. I'm not sure what the right way to introduce iPads (or any similar technology) is, but what I do know is that it would be worthwhile to know in advance why you're doing it and what you're expecting to do with it. I can tell you that perhaps the worst way to do it is to dump a bunch of iPads into a school, give them to some members of the school community (students) but not others (teachers), and say "Here, use these." Or to give them out without a structure within which they are to be used.

I'm certainly not saying that we should tell everyone exactly how they should work with technology. I'm all for finding my own way in general, but that works best when there are specific objectives and strategies. But if the objective is merely to use the iPads, what are we to do now?

Q. How frustrated are you with this?

A. Not a usual FAQ, I admit. But the whole thing seems silly to me. Not that the question of technology in schools is silly. It's quite serious. And that means that taking action without having a solid idea of what you want to accomplish is silly, especially with a serious topic. Does anyone really know how all of this is supposed to work? Oops, this is supposed to be the answer part.

Q. Does anybody really know how this is supposed to work?

A. Aha! I know the answer to that one! No, of course not! Part of what's so interesting about this whole thing is that it's way to early to accurately predict outcomes.

Q. So why even do anything?

A. That goes directly to my point. If you start by understanding that you know nothing, then you take an approach designed to help you learn, to advance your knowledge and understanding. But that takes planning and discipline and measurement tools. We shouldn't be figuring out that stuff after we've already introduced the technology.

The Fyood

Somehow, we sometimes find ourselves eating dinner with the TV on when Family Feud is on TV. The Feud has a long and undistinguished history. It was hosted first by Richard Dawson, part of the "Hogan's Heroes" ensemble, who after being a "celebrity" panelist on other game shows became perhaps the smarmiest game show host ever. I know that's a high bar to clear, but this guy oozed sexual innuendo and made all the female contestants kiss him. Yeah, really.

If you've not seen the show, you might be disappointed to know that there is no actual feuding. That may seem quaint in this day of reality TV, where you might expect families scheming to undermine their competitors or even take up arms in order to win. In fact, the families rarely interact with each other at all, except in the first step, where a question was asked of 100 people and the contestants are asked to guess what the most popular answers were. Each family has a representative guess and whoever has the best guess gives their family the chance to play. THe other family goes to the other side of the stage and watches until their opponents either guess all of the most common answers and win, or fail, giving them a chance to fill in a missing answer and snatch the victory.

So when we last watched, we got to see the question "Name something you would never want to end." One family named things like favorite song or movie, marriage, vacation, that kind of stuff, but left one spot blank. We were stumped and the other family tried too but failed to guess that the thing 8 out of 100 people wanted never to end was "The World." Wouldn't have occurred to me either.

Next round, when the 2 people were vying to get control of the play, the question was, "Name something a burglar would not want to see when he enters the house." One guy buzzed in and actually yelled out "Nekkid Granny!" The host, veteran comedian  Steve Harvey, lost it. He doubled over and didn't speak for a minute. It was all downhill from there. Oh, and it was scored as a correct answer (though the game board said "somebody home.")

New video

I was running the water to get it hot for doing the dishes and heard a noise in the sink, so I looked down and saw this.

Math and guns, what could be better?

I'm not a huge fan of guns. I've shot at targets and skeet and I'm perfectly comfortable going to the house of friends who I know to be responsible gun owners, but it's just not a particular interest of mine. I'd rather shoot baskets (sorry, that was cheap).

But some of the debate coming out of Washington is so batsh-t crazy that I had to pay attention. One of the witnesses was talking about the need to have high-capacity magazines because it'd come in handy for a woman alone with young children when multiple heavily armed intruders break in.

I just want to stop for a moment and ask, exactly how many times has that situation happened in the past year? The witness didn't cite any. Once? Twice? Ever?

So let's say it actually happened, maybe even twice in the past year. Is this something to base policy on? Are two instances in a year too many? For the specific people involved, I suppose so. For the country? It's too minuscule to even mention; two instances in a year, in 115 million households? How likely is that? Well, how often does something for which the percent likelihood is 1.73 millionths of one percent. occur? For you decimal fans, it's a probability of 0.0000000174.

I'll put it in academic terms. It means you would have about 10 times greater chance of taking the SAT 3 times, guessing on every question, and getting every single one right all 3 times. Does anyone make study decisions based on that?

So why this then? Clearly there's no logic involved. So emotionally then. Why exactly would this happen? Who would be doing such a thing? Criminals don't do stuff because they're looking to accomplish evil (Snidely Whiplash excepted. Even Bond villains want something). Criminals usually want money. So if they want to steal stuff, why multiple people and why be shooting? That decreases your possible take because you have to split it and it increases your chance of getting caught because it's attention-getting. It's too dumb, even for really stupid, really bad people.

So why did the US Senate spend time discussing this?