I find what she says in her more recent speech to be an anthema to my core values.

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it’s time to replace an “on your own” society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

Darwin and Bettina should find such rhetoric comforting. Of course neither of them are in favor of working.

So I went to bed last night and my computer was functioning perfectly. I wake up this morning to find that Internet Explorer had put up 3 pop ads. Not good since I have not used that program in weeks. Close them only to see each one open up three more windows. Great adware has installed itself on my computer yet again. Grrrrrr.

Before I leave for work I set my anti virus software to scan for malicious codes and unplug my ethernet cable. I get home and guess what my the scan has revealed. JUST GUESS!

Yep no less than four Trojan Horses have managed to install themselves onto my computer. I tell the software to destroy them and unsurprisingly the software fails. Time to format and reinstall. Woot.

The only thing that makes this a good thing is that while bitching about it at work I find out one of my friends has two copies of Windows Vista. He gives me on of those copies and now my system is running Vista. I love the way it looks but I’m worried about program incompatibility issues.

I will keep you posted.

for the Night Watchman State. As opposed to Darwin and Bettina’s favorite the Nanny State.

Michael Yon, about the only actual reporter in Iraq that actually bothers to cover* the war writes:

Both men often lamented to me how frustrating it was to be back home and realize that the average American is not aware of practically any of the progress that’s been made in Iraq. Both men darken with something closer to anger when they consider the sacrifices made by fallen soldiers and the fact that while the media most likely counted the deaths in all instances, they also most likely failed to mention any of the good things their fellow soldiers had accomplished while in Iraq.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to work day and night, risking your life to Improve only to go home and see that nobody has any clue on the work you have done. This truly is an indictment on the deplorable behavior of MSM refusing to cover any of the good things in Iraq. Heres to hoping the success of Iraq will break wide open the bias coverage of MSM. I do believe Iraq will work out and when that occurs many will be alarmed by the huge disconnect of what they have been reading and what actually happened.

*By cover i mean talks about the good things and the bad things in Iraq. He is not afraid to criticize the military but he certainly also takes time to give it it’s due.

Why is this story not covered nearly as the 100% false Duke non-rape story?

Click here for the video.

According to a new study:

Turns out that sheer intelligence is not enough to become a young math whiz. It also takes a good attention span and training your mind to “self regulate” or focus on the task at hand.

In all modesty, I have never met someone that comes even close to rivaling me in my ability to remain focused on a task.

The GRE is setup in a way to penalize me for my assiduousness. By allotting only 96 seconds to solve a problem one must move so quickly through the problems they are unable to focus on any one problem in a substantial way. Given this new study, my poor performance on the GRE is actually an indication of my intelligence. Accordingly, graduate schools don’t reject me cause I’m not intelligent, in point of fact they reject because I am intelligent.

All joking aside, from what I can tell, intelligence is most commonly used as away to describe someone that can rephrase what you say in a fashion you are likely to agree with. One will get bonus points if when rephrasing they incorporates more technical words so long as they are not so abstruse that the original speaker does not know their meaning.

This definition of intelligence makes sense when one examines standardized tests. While standardized tests have multiple answers there is only one correct answer. For the test maker, the correct answer is the reformulation that most closely resembles the question. And who judges which of the answers is the one that most closely resembles the question? Why the test makers of course. Just like a speaker that thinks someone is intelligent based off their ability to reformulate what they say, the test maker of standardized tests judges your intelligence based off your ability to identify that answer they think most closely resembles the reformulation of their question. In a standardized test there are no intrinsically correct answers. Only answers that are extrinsically evaluated to be more related to the question than the other answers.

Has anyone ever taken a standardized test by a bunch of test makers who believed themselves to be stupid? I’m guessing not. Unsurprisingly, people who consider themselves intelligent are the ones that develop intelligence tests. Theirs just one slight problem: their standardized test only measures other people’s ability to see what the test maker believes is the closet connection between question and answer. The system becomes self-selecting. One’s intellectual capacity is measured as a function of their ability to see connections that ‘intelligent’ people can see.

When my family gets together for holidays we spend most of that time joking with each other. Many of my father’s jokes are extremely abstruse. Having lived with my father for many years, and being imbued with many of the same genetic personality dispositions me and my brothers are usually able to discern the meaning of his jokes. Those not familiar with my father’s brand of humor are left out in the dark until one of us can translate for them. If my father decided to create a standardized test with the purpose of measuring intelligence his three children would set the upper portion of the scale. We would rapidly and quickly see those answers and questions my father most closely associates.

Questions are always asked in a context of the group of people asking the question. Standardized tests sit in the context of a small group of people that reformulate what you tell them in a succinct meaning that you assent with.

Over an Intstapundit, Reynolds talks about the growing private industry of space tourism. He writes:

One thing for Buzz — he’s been working to promote space tourism, space development, and space settlement tirelessly for years. I couldn’t handle his travel schedule, and he’s thirty years older than me. (And when we ran in the Race For Space over a decade ago, he was faster than me.) He spoke eloquently about how unfair it was that he and only a few others had managed to experience space and the Moon, and how important it is that others get to share that experience.

I certainly think he’s right. I believe that the space tourism efforts we see now will help jump start things, and generate a learning curve, and efficiencies, that the NASA programs have never achieved — and, in fact, have sometimes even undermined. And I think it’s a big benefit to have Buzz Aldrin in there pushing for this kind of thing. Ten years ago, space tourism had a high “giggle factor.” Now it’s taken seriously, and things are just starting.

A while back Darwin wrote that in war, innovation does not occur because of the barefaced competition apparent when an enemy is intent on destroying a country, but rather because the nation is more willing to devote massive resources to those programs that generate the innovation. Does that mean Darwin would argue that a burgeoning private space industry will have no affect on the development of space technologies if when different companies are competing with each other? If it was possible, would he favor taking all the money that the private sector is using to develop this industry and give it back to NASA?

Let’s say in 20 years that the individuals that pour their lives and resources succeeded in developing a profitable space industry. To accomplish this entrepreneurs needed to employ a corporate model of organization to maximize efficiency so as to make space tourism as affordable as possible to as many consumers as possible. Upset at the treatment of employees at the entry level would Darwin demand reorganization of the system to ensure all employees are treated fairly. What if this would increase the cost of the space tourism such that many consumers would no longer be able to afford it?

Via Instapundit,

Even though he was not trained to be a historian, James O. Hall became the authority on Lincoln’s assassination. Who do these upstarts think they are? Without the formal training acquired from an advanced university degree they are not qualified to write and think about serious matters. This James Hall even wrote a book that at the time debunked the current expert theory on why Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. This is a very dangerous precedent and it sends the wrong message. Only experts should be entrusted with the power to debunk false ideas, they have the proper training to insure nobody gets hurt when the debunking occurs.

In the previous post Darwin puts forward a poorly articulated argument:

I, personally, have no possibility of advancement in my current job- I can only advance by leaving for grad school, and despite goofing off alot and not being efficient, I impressed my superiors enough to get the recommendation I needed to do that. Steve’s been working damn hard for years and hasn’t gotten that step up - the system doesn’t work. I don’t know for sure whether or not my system would work, but I think it has a good shot of being better than the current corporate model.

Characterizing his position more formally:

The ‘corporate’ model is desirable because those that work harder are rewarded with advancement as compared to those that don’t. Steve works harder than Brian in the corporate model and yet Brain has advanced while Steve remains behind. Thus the corporate model does not reward those that work harder.

Just in the formalization I think it becomes obvious why Darwin’s argument fails. The process of gaining admittance into graduate school is most certainly not structured to anything close to resembling the corporate model.

The corporate model consolidates power into managerial nodes. These managers make the decision for most everyone below them. This is precisely the problem Darwin has with the corporate system; the managerial nodes have too much power and are able to make decisions for those under them without consultation of those employees. By restructuring the system so that all workers have a portion of the ownership, the employee must be consulted with before a decision regarding their employment can be made. This, in the eyes of Darwin, will improve job satisfaction ‘on the whole’ for that company.

Taking this organizational style and applying it to the admission process for an academic department seems virtually impossible. Faculty members at the departmental level are not consolidated under a single manager. All of the important departmental decisions are made by vote among the tenured faculty. This more closely resembles Darwin’s ownership system than the corporate system I favor.

Speaking of important departmental decisions made by vote, determining which prospective graduate students the department will accept is decided by committee. In a very real sense, tenured faculty members and to a certain extent junior faculty and current graduate students all ‘own’ the determination of what graduate students are to be accepted.

Being given ‘ownership’ of the quality of the upcoming graduate class how does the faculty and staff respond? Mostly by putting off the important work of reviewing the applications until the last moment and then relying on summary scores to eliminate large groups of applicants. At more prestigious schools, to deal with the sheer number of applicants they receive departmental votes are made determining the minimal scores required before serious inquire will be given to an application. It’s at that point I’m cut out of the stack marked for serious review. The ‘ownership’ system cuts hard working determined applicants out of the pool because the faculty members are too lazy to discover my diligence through a careful screening of all applicants. Is there any wonder why I heavily favor the corporate system?

Looking at it from the perspective of the faculty member, I can appreciate the monumental task of having to seriously review 400 candidates. No mater how idealistic you start out your career thinking you will fairly review all applicants over time that optimism will be grinded down by the shear monotony of reviewing the same twenty types of candidates. Like it or not you will begin to rely on summary scores. Besides, it’s absurd to have a department devote so many resources to reviewing applicants particularly when much of it would be squandered in the redundancy of having the same applicant reviewed multiple times.

After considering the problem of winnowing down the applicant pool fairly I believe I’ve thought of a solution. The department should reorganize the system into something that more closely resembles a corporate form. Instead of giving the faculty the responsibility of reviewing applicants the department should create a staff position charged with carefully reviewing all applicants. Think of them as a recruiter for the department and their job would be to fully review the applicant pool to determine the most qualified applicants. To eliminate the problem of receiving a massive amount of applicants in November and December the department would accept students in three-month intervals for each fall semester. That will spread the applications out over the year giving the recruiter more time to devote on each individual applicant. At the end of the three-month period he could give a stack of promising applicants to the committee, which could then do their own review and make final votes on the students they accept.

A recruiter will see to it that those that have high scores on the GRE are reviewed, but since he has more time and is obligated to review all applicants he will see other indications of a promising applicant. For example he would be able to read all the letters of intent which would allow him to see how some applicants slept four hour days so that they could work in a research lab while supporting themselves with a full time job. At this point I’m reasonably certain that practically none of the schools I have applied to were aware of the extreme measures I have taken to prove myself as a worthy researcher. Since its to hard for them to live up to the responsibility of what they ‘own’ they see my 1280 and throw my application in the trash bin after depositing my application fee.

I think my inability to get into graduate schools serves as the perfect example of why the ‘ownership’ model fails on almost every level. By every measure, I should be in a top tier graduate school. In my years as a research assistant I would say at least half of the students I have seen get into graduate school are less qualified than me. I have seen graduate student after graduate student that wasn’t motivated, unwilling to work, had no sense of what it means to do research, and believe graduate school to be an extension of the undergraduate party scene. I have seen more graduate students than I care to count who were in graduate school cause they didn’t know what to do with their life and some who were their only to appease their parents. I have seen all of these students score higher than me on one test and in very similar to your ownership model the faculty all got to vote on who was accepted and these people received majority votes over me.

I have never met a graduate student that intentionally selected courses for his major that were most relevant to the kind of research he knew he wanted to devote his life to. I have never met a graduate student that financed and developed from scratch his own research experiment. I have never met a graduate student that immersed them self in an unfamiliar scientific field to become proficient enough to write an actual NIH grant in that field. I don’t know any graduate students who intentionally selected a second major to further enhance their ability to understand and theorize about their avenue of chosen research. I have never met a graduate student that intentionally took eight additional natural science courses to ensure they had a full grasp of the underlying science that supports their research. I have never met a graduate student that spent a year getting four hours of sleep a night so that he could spend time getting experience working in a lab. I have never met a graduate student that spent well over 400 hours studying for a test that arbitrarily determines your fitness for graduate school. I have never seen a graduate student that as a research assistant attended multiple talks on a variety of different topics because they find them intrinsically interesting. I have never met a graduate student that as a research assistant worked over forty hours a week, sometimes weekends and often times skipping lunch, to work with no less than three different principal investigators at the same time who were all studying different concepts. I have never met a graduate student that as a research assistant that can design a task, run all the subjects, pre and post process all the data, and perform the ROI interrogation on multiple projects. I have met plenty of graduate students that scored higher than me on the GRE. Faculty members at Yale, Duke, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Pittsburgh, Michigan given ownership of the graduate students decided that these applicants where more qualified than me for graduate school.

When the faculty members voted on who to take do you think they knew these things about me? Absolutely not. They didn’t know my GRE scores but they did know that my score was not good enough even for review. That was all they needed to avoid reviewing my other qualifications. If a staff member was charged with spending his whole day examining applicants do you think he would know about my other achievements? It’s much more likely.

And you dare say it’s the corporate model that failed me. It’s the very essence of your model that has kept me out of graduate school for five years. Five Years. You should be ashamed of yourself.