School
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The Science Kid
That’s me, with George F. R. Buletza, the principal of Maywood (NJ) Junior High. I was in the 8th grade, five-foot-three and eighty-three pounds, still with hair, no body fat, and obsessed by sciences in general and radio in particular. From my bedroom window I could see the lights atop the towers of New York’s… Continue reading
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Let’s give full credit to human ingenuity
In The American Dream, Quantified at Last, David Leonhardt in The New York Times makes a despairing case for a perfect Onion headline: American Dream Ends When Nation Wakes Up. Like so much else the Times correctly tries to do, the piece issues a wake-up call. It is also typical of the Times’ tendency to… Continue reading
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Summer vs. School
This was me in the summer of ’53, between Kindergarten and 1st Grade, probably in July, the month I turned six years old: I’m the one with the beer. And this was me in 1st Grade, Mrs. Heath’s class: I’m in the last row by the aisle with my back against the wall, looking lost, which… Continue reading
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Frontiers of Typicality
Dear Student Name, Your Remarkable Candidate Application for admission to Uncanny Valley University is already mostly done. Click here to see. We’ve pre-filled lots of stuff to make sure you get a personalized application experience. And, your Remarkable Candidate status also qualifies you to get these Remarkable Advantages: No essay (we’ve written that for you too) Some kind of scholarship Short cut to… Continue reading
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Identity systems, failing to communicate
There is a classic scene in Cool Hand Luke where the prison warden (Strother Martin), says to the handcuffed Luke, (Paul Newman), that he doesn’t like it when Luke talks to him as an equal. So, to teach a lesson, the warden smacks Luke hard, sending him rolling down a hill. The warden then says to the… Continue reading
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Lessons
When our kid started using a computer in the seventh grade, I got him a copy of Mavis Beacon so he’d learn how to touch-type. I didn’t see him using the program, but I did see him typing. So I asked him what was up with that. He said “I looked at it a couple of… Continue reading
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On the short good life George Desdunes
I didn’t know George Desdunes, though now I wish I’d had the privilege. He was a friend of acquaintances who sent out emails in March to lists of people who might want to know he had died and to provide details about his funeral. Those emails were among many others I barely noticed at the time. This… Continue reading
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What station(s) does KDFC pave in the South Bay?
So now KDFC is on 90.3 and 88.9, while KUSF is off the air. (Though it does have a Live365 stream.) Radio Valencia, a pirate radiating out of the Mission district on 87.9, has expressed sympathy with KUSF’s exiled volunteers, and has provided some airtime as well. The University of San Francisco, which sold the… Continue reading
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A toast to common genius
Although I appreciate being called “smart” (as Hugh MacCleod kindly does here), that adjective has always troubled me, no matter what, or to whom, it’s applied. Two reasons: 1) because I believe smartness is a far more common quality than our bell-curving institutions would have us believe; and 2) because the label too often serves… Continue reading
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IQ and Caste
Smart people SLEEP LATE yells the headline of this opinion piece in the Winnipeg Free Press. It begins, Sleep is a fundamental component of animal biology. New evidence confirms that, in humans, its timing reflects intelligence. People with higher IQs (intelligence quotients) tend to be more active nocturnally, going to bed later, whereas those with… Continue reading