Rate your professors

Wired's "Prof-Ratings Site Irks Academics" found me smirking: it's about time! The internet can really level the playing field when it comes to information. Now with ratemyprofessors.com it's easy to complain or praise teachers. Teachers will have harder time hiding behind tenure because if the students fail to sign up for bad teachers (i.e., the students avoid them), the school has to dump even the tenured professors, no?

It's things like this (or revisionism) that I love about the internet (at least the libertarian in me)....

Reason #614: why public school can be bad

Four Tavares Middle School students have been arrested on charges of molesting two girls on a school bus and a third at a bus stop, the Lake County Sheriff's Office said Monday.The boys, who are between 12 and 14 years old, were on the bus when they asked two girls to show them their breasts, according to an arrest report. When the girls refused, they held them down and fondled them. One boy used a camera cell phone to take pictures and a video, which they showed to other boys after getting off the bus at school, according to the report.

You got to question what they are teaching/encouraging at public schools these days....

Libertarian view: individual responsibilities both economic and "foreign affairs"

I liked how Lew Rockwell points out the irony of both sides of the stereotypical political spectrum:

• "conservative right" wants economic freedom (capitalism) but big government war machine.
• "liberal left" wants socialism (big government economic controls) but little or no war machine by the government.

Libertarian view is to have none of the inconsistencies: no big government. Period. No economic controls and no war machines. Individuals should be free to form their own groups be it local home education coop or a mega-church or even a security (or "mercenary") firm. Or not.

Job change

I now have a contract job for 6 months but I'm still on a hunt for a full time job.

Who says a Lawyer Needs Law School?

"law readers" -- people who study law in offices or judges' chambers rather than classrooms. California, Vermont, Virginia and Washington allow law readers to take bar exams after three or four years in apprenticeships registered with the state. Three other states -- New York, Maine and Wyoming -- let non-law school graduates take bar exams if they have a combination of office study and law school experience.

[See details of each state at: "A Glance at Different State Bar Rules."]

So, it's a myth that one must go through law school or even college to become a lawyer. It is prefectly OK to become a lawyer without any formal education.

TV Evangelists

I was briefly reading the article "TV Networks Pursue the 'Super Fan'" and one phrase that caught my attention:

Johnson[...], not only watches a lot but also prides herself on spreading the word to get others to tune in. Johnson gives new meaning to the term TV evangelist, and lately reaching people like her has become the Holy Grail of network executives.

Whatever happened to the real evangelists? First Apple turns marketing into evangelism and now TV networks are turning word of mouth ads into evangelism. I guess once the "real" TV evangelists started getting black eyes, the word "evangelism" lost its sacredness....

Financial education in a virtual world

I though that this was one way to teach financee: Wells Fargo launches game inside "Second life" to teach finance! It's promoting Wells Fargo brand, of course, but to teach some money concepts in virtual world is very interesting. I don't like some of the details since it is far from reality but not a bad start.

Programming 101

I've been promising my sons to teach them game programming for some time now. I've been putting off all summer due to my impending layoff at work but now that I'm unemployed, I've been busy attending meetings and interviews to sit down and teach them until Wednesday. So I downloaded Stagecast demoware and got them going through the training courses. They put together some simple "game" but quickly ran up to the limitations by Thursday.

So now I'm contemplating getting into more real programming with Smalltalk (Squeak) next week....