The Millennium Shrimp

Pretty cool counter-protest idea against the Westboro Baptist Church.

Via Boing Boing and Laughing Squid

Pretty cool counter-protest idea against the Westboro Baptist Church.

Via Boing Boing and Laughing Squid

Thought this was an interesting study:

In the study, led by Jamie Arndt, PhD, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, randomly chosen university medical students were asked to answer questions about their own mortality. Afterward, all the study participants inspected fictitious emergency room admittance forms for Muslim and Christian patients complaining of chest pain, and risk assessments were made for each patient. The participants who had been reminded of their personal mortality rendered more serious cardiac risk estimates for Christians and less serious estimates for Muslims despite the patients being otherwise identical in their characteristics and symptoms.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/cardiac-risk-estimates-differ-christian-and-muslim-patients-17638.html

The study blurb doesn’t say what profession of faith that the medical students had, if any, only noting that none of them identified themselves as Muslim. One wonders whether there would be a difference in assessments depending on whether or not they identified as Christians or as Agnostic/ cultural Christians.

There’s nothing like asking the most important question of your life over twitter. Evidently, this is the new badge of geek cred. Of course it, it doesn’t really compare to Cmdr Taco proposing to his wife on /. And she even posted her answer. That’s still probably the ultimate geek marriage proposal. Well, besides building a laser and burning the question into the near side of the moon in letters large enough to be visible from space:-)

Heh, yes, you can build a Linux cluster in a filing cabinet. I may have to put this on the to do list.

Does America need rockstar teachers?
My cousin Craig posted a link to a NYT article on comments Intel’s Craig Barrett made in support of a report released by Achieve Inc., a non-profit Education Policy think tank that he co-chairs. Evidently in Finland, teaching is a highly sought after occupation.

One comment on the original NYT article I thought was insightful:

Until parents and schools begin to realize that our entertainment culture is hurting the minds and aspirations of our young people, there is no hope for the state of education in the United States. A culture that celebrates wealth, flash and emotional manipulation is bound to be headed towards the same sorts of fires that burned Rome to the ground.

Sort of reminds me of the Extramurous society in Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem. Too bad we don’t have the Avout concents as well.
I actually don’t think that the problem is that teachers aren’t paid enough. The last time I checked, being a Doctor or a Lawyer was slightly more difficult than teaching, and we actually have a shortage of doctors in certain specialties. We currently seem to have a glut of people willing to teach. And, to be honest, is it really necessary to have our best and brightest clamoring for teaching jobs? I mean, do you really want to draw those people away from cutting edge research to teach Johnny 7th Grade Earth Science?

Maybe we just need to get rid of the rockstars.