cbsnews | No U.S. intelligence agency has ever been under the kind of pressure
being faced by the National Security Agency after details of some of its most
secret programs were leaked by contractor Edward Snowden. Perhaps because of that
pressure the agency gave 60 Minutes unprecedented access to NSA headquarters
where we were able to speak to employees who have never spoken publicly before.
Full disclosure, I once worked in the office of the director of National
Intelligence where I saw firsthand how secretly the NSA operates. It is
often said NSA stands for "never say anything," but tonight the agency
breaks with that tradition to address serious questions about whether the NSA
delves too far into the lives of Americans.
Gen. Keith Alexander: The fact is, we're not collecting everybody's
email, we're not collecting everybody's phone things, we're not listening to
that. Our job is foreign intelligence and we're very good at that.
The man in charge is Keith Alexander, a four-star Army general who leads
the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.
John Miller: There is a perception out there that the NSA is widely
collecting the content of the phone calls of Americans. Is that true?
8 comments:
Omnilingual (Feb 1957) by H. Beam Piper
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/03/scientific-language-h-beam-pipers-qomnilingualq
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/308/omnilingual
http://librivox.org/omnilingual-by-h-beam-piper/
Badge of Infamy (Jun 1957) by Lester del Rey
http://librivox.org/badge-of-infamy-by-lester-del-rey/
http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/book/badge-of-infamy-by-lester-del-rey
Who needs museums when we have tablets. We can have videos and simulations.
Most of these proposals are completely nuts. The primary reason why so many gifted students who take AP courses do poorly on AP exams is not because their classes aren't moving at a sufficiently "accelerated" pace, but simply because their neural systems are not yet fully developed to handle the abstract reasoning required to perform college-level scientific work with real understanding.
In terms of teaching science, what's really needed, for both the gifted and the average student, is to step back and put the science curriculum on a more and firmer concrete foundation, more suited to whatever stage the kids' neural development is at. Less (perhaps much less) bookwork and problem sets, and much more physical manipulations of materials. I know from experience that gifted kids especially can be very, very glib with language; to the untrained ear, it may seem that they thoroughly understand a scientific principle (say, orbitals or cell division), when in fact their understanding is rudimentary at best. Applying accelerationism to gifted education is a train wreck waiting to happen.
And we haven't even touched on the deleterious effects accelerationism would have on these kids' social development. Talk about a guaranteed way to generate infra-sexual personalities! None of these kids need hyper-accelerated AP physics at age 14. What they need is more exposure to something like this:
http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=250508
To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm
for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed.
Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling
compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain,
and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s
responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; When one is left to fend for himself, the culture of competence hardens and deadens as well. Try Harder! Do Better!! Make Efforts!!!! - or die...,
I figured out in 8th grade that school was all about cattle management. I wish I was aware of my options when I was in high school. I would've dropped out and spent a year at a junior college. That idea didn't come to me until I was 20.
Kids today have options available to them that they should consider. K-12 is a waste of their time. If you're designated as gifted, you really should be getting the fuck out ASAP. They can't help you. College is much better for one's development anyway.
Yeah my daughter's in 5th grade, her math basically just caught up to where we had her in 1st grade, plus now she dislikes the subject.
Are you an unschooler?
I guess you could call me one. I line up with them philosophically, but I won't publicaly call myself an unschooler.
We were discussing unschooling and the Sudbury schools a couple of months back. In principle, there's merit in the approach. My main beef with it is that its adherents can't seem to visualize anything other than a women's finishing school as a context for it. So unschooling ends up being about cultivating the "domestic arts"...and that's about it. But perhaps that's the whole point.
Post a Comment