I like research. I like learning knew things. So something bothered me when I was writing a research paper. People were telling me I needed to have an opinion. In my view, it is a research paper, and I should be telling people the facts (http://webapps.national.edu/research_writing/docs/PDFs/ResearchvsEssay.pdf). I didn't want to write an ordinary paper involving me sticking my opinion in and trying to make it seem write, I wanted to write a research paper about an issue and inform the reader what it is about. Maybe I'm wrong and it should have had more of a direction from me. Sure, I had a paragraph or two about my stance and view. That's all there was though. As I said, I like research. A lot of the articles I found were really good research papers from places like California Polytechnical School in San Lois Obispo (this one was sponsered by the Office of Naval Research) and was a really interesting read. Another was about a Robo-Ethics event held by the Naval Postgraduate School. That was a good one too. I think I have a preference for this one, which I didn't use in my paper, by Boston Dynamics. It was about their technology, BigDog. The way the paper was written, it was entirely devoted to talking about BigDog's capabilites. I suppose what I'm saying is that I like reports, really. When a physicist or chemist makes a report on an experiment they did, that's what I like. Perhaps it's essays I dislike.
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Are students being overburdened? I must say, I personally enjoy conflicting sources, until I don't (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/time_and_learning/2014/03/american_students_not_overburdened_by_homework_brown_center_says.html). This article though doesn't seem to cover college students, which dissapoints me. I'll get right to the meat. I think college students have too many classes to cover. Too much material. But maybe this is the wrong perspective. Transfer students. Yes, I think transfer students have a much larger burden than people are aware of (http://hechingerreport.org/underserved-and-overburdened-transfer-students-face-an-uphill-battle-to-earn-their-degrees/). And I'm one of them. Transferring from a community college is tricky, they have lots of courses that have to be taken to fill their requirements for transferring and graduating. Then there are the specific requirements for the college being transferred to. And I'm not the only one facing this issue. There are other students I've talked to that are facing this issue, they took years to get out of their community college. We're swamped, or at least we were swamped. Myself, I'm quite happy that I've finally moved on. Now I face the challenge of a real college.
In light of the methodology of another class, the ethics of grading has passed through my mind. And I've thought about it. The Junior ProSeminar class, for example, requires a paper and a presentation to be passed. Regardless of the grade, if the student does not pass these two assignments, they fail the class automatically. It seems like a harsh grading style, but for that class, that is the purpose. The student must be able to write a research paper and do a presentation on it. They must be able to speak, present, and write.
I got to thinking, if you've read my "School, Teaching and Writing" blog, then you would know how I feel about archaic methods of teaching. So I will now present you with the idea of archaic methods of grading. One of the blog posts on that subject talked about the difference between memorization and learning. This is where I get annoyed. Some classes, such as mathematics, require an incredible amount of memorization. In some instances, one could argue that students are not learning, merely memorizing a pattern to something, and spitting it back out with little to no critical thinking on the matter. For me, I detest memorization. I may understand math, but I cannot remember it. If you are wondering why I continuously reference math, it is because I have failed it many times in the past. In some cases, I didn't know because I had not learned something but in most cases, I could not remember it. And there was a lot I understood. Unfortunately D's don't count, and I consider them a slap in the face, as they represent that you did in-fact learn something, but not enough to reach "passing". I suppose you could consider the argument of redefining how students are passed. Now here's the question: What is more important? Grades or Knowledge?(http://www.wtfprofessor.com/getting-grades-vs-learning-the-great-debate/) In another one of my classes, there is a certain percentage I must reach for certain assignments or I do not pass. Basically another "automatic F" style system. Suppose though that a student has reached a level of knowledge that equates to 80 percent or more of the content covered in the class. They should pass right? Suppose though that they received less than a 30 percent in the class (Author's Note: Didn't want to use values that seemed too real). Seems kinda unfortunate, to learn enough but do poorly. I suppose the ultimate irony would be for said student to make a six-figure salary at some company using said information. What do you think? So, I'm talking about the election again. Didn't think I would but here I am. So, there's been talk about voters having been uninformed during this election about the major issues (http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/poll-reveals-voters-are-uninformed-about-major-issues/). I think it's more than just the issues, I think voters are uninformed about the government. Not this particular government, but the general idea of our government, what it can do, the powers of each branch and how they check and balance each other.
The government has three branches. You know this. The legislative, judicial, and executive. The President who is the head of the executive branch is elected every 4 years, with two term limits (4 years long). The legislative branch, known as Congress consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Representatives have 2 year terms and Senators have 6 year terms. No term limits for the House or Senate. The judicial branch is a panel of Justices, and they are nominated by the President and confirmed by Congress. They serve for life. Why am I talking about this? Because I had a person in one of my classes say that "Trump can undo the last 50 years of progress as President. Roe v Wade can be overturned. Same-sex marriage can be undone." I didn't say anything because I don't like to teach what PoliSci 1 covers so very well. And this is ethics class, so I've decided to present an interesting ethical question. Should we force people to learn how the government works in order to vote? I presented this question to a group of friends, one of which told me that it would depend upon who administers the presentation/class. That's it, I'm done. No more politics. As for you, should we force people to understand the world they live in? There are two things (minus other stuff), maybe events is a better word, that can get me fuming. The first is when someone soils the good name of something by using it to further their opinion, or present bias. The second is even considering saying anything (and meaning it) about my all-time favorite children's toy: Legos. Fortunately, nobody has said anything about my all-time favorite childrens' toy. Otherwise this would be FAR more opinionated that it has already become. That. Being. Said. Star Trek was hit. I'm going to give you the link before I continue (http://www.startrek.com/podcasts?ecid=PCID-2617611&page=2, Episode 24). Note that they point out twice that it is the "Official Star Trek Podcast" (This is also done by the Startrek.com page, supported by CBS).
Jordan Hoffman talks about how Armin Shimerman gave his support for Hillary Clinton. Now, that's ok in my opinion. If someone has someone they support, they can do that. Sure, some people will hop on his opinion, he is a celebrity, but that is his own "popularity" if you will. And if Hoffman wants to report on that, it is fine. And I gotta love where he states himself how everybody is entitled to their "weird and incorrect opinion". And he does all this in the first five minutes. He also goes on to talk about the "Trek Against Trump" movement supported by many Star Trek actors. "If so many of our Star Trek creators are doing this, lets focus on it for an episode". Once again, I'm fine with that. But don't put in your opinion into something official. Especially with Star Trek. I picture Gene Roddenberry rolling in his grave right about now. If you did not know, Gene Roddenberry is the creator of Star Trek. What I do not support is how this podcaster chose to insert his opinion so early into the show. Just because you run the Star Trek podcast, does not make it a platform for opinion, even if most of the people who appear to listen to the show support your ideals. This is Star Trek. There is also a Facebook page for StarTrek.com, where some people had interesting (and supportable by me) comments: "Gene would never use Star Trek like this to promote or denounce a political opinion. Yes, the show took on Social issues, but never against a candidate, or political party." "I don't have a problem with them supporting the candidate of their choice but don't wrap yourself in Star Trek since none of the candidates even come close to living up to the ideals shown on the series. It's the Brunt vs Kai Winn election to put it in series terms :)" "Actually, Armin Shimerman divides fans in a way that they've never been divided before in the 50 years of the franchise. "It doesn't matter how you feel about Trump or how you feel about Clinton. These people just took a huge dump on Star Trek." "This is a very bad idea. Do not damage your brand by coming out swinging for a candidate, thus alienating a significant portion of your audience. Don't do this" "I considered myself a fairly devout fan of star trek...minus this fiasco JJ has foust upon us. Star trek embodies the best of humanity and while I admire Quarks namesake I despise his use of star trek for a political platform. You, the political pawns, will ruin yet another franchise if JJ hasn't done it enough already." -(https://www.facebook.com/StarTrek/posts/1605698572779975) I like that last one. JJ kills all he touches. I think I've digressed enough. What do you think! Authors Note: I only listened to the first 7 minutes before stopping. I'm sure many of you remember when The Interview came out in 2014. Or tried to. This was a movie about two Journalists (one played by Seth Rogen) who are recruited to assassinate the leader of North Korea. As the release date for the film came closer, an online group called 'The Guardians of Peace' hacked Sony (who made the film) and released tons of internal information (e-mails, etc). They then threatened that they would hack again and bomb many movie theaters if Sony released the film. Following this, several large movie theaters declined to show the film. Interestingly, North Korea's internet was brought down or intermittent for several hours during this time. Here's the full article with a timeline (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30608179).
The question I'm asking is, are we safe? We have lots of security and people don't seem to be interested in surveillance programs of any kind. So why would anyone be concerned of movie theaters being bombed? I'll grant a concession for the surveillance, I know that people don't want the government collecting their information. On the flip-side, I was told that there are "sympathizers" to North Korea who live in the country. Now this may not be factual, but having sympathizers to a cause living in any place is not uncommon. I could see people who, for the most part, live good honest lives, but are still part of a "sleeper cell". They could be part of this group. Told to do a job when the time is right. Granted, there is some speculation here. Maybe more than I will admit. However, for multiple movie chains and an entire company to be intimidated by some random hacker group, which for all we know consists of a small handful of people, is really.. unfortunate. Now I won't go too much into this, but one could argue that our ideals and freedoms (mainly the freedom of speech) is silently under attack. This is a film and it does have a view, so to speak. Is this not a form of censorship? I try to avoid speculation that is not based on at least some fact. Though I do think it is unfortunate that such an event occurred and we must be limited by it. What do you think? Should we prevent this from happening? Go after the hackers? What should Sony have done? I still have yet to see the movie.. This is an interesting/personal issue for me, which is why I am writing about it. Whenever someone asks me to talk about something, I am capable of giving them volumes of information. However, when asked to write something, I give five nice lines. Maybe ten if I have more words ready. On occasion, if I have major feelings for something, I can write more. A lot more. For the paper, I knew my writing would be short, and had to find a way to expand the volume so it would be lengthy enough. Some weeks ago, a friend had showed me speech-to-text on my phone, and I quickly realized that this would be key to making progress on the paper. Low and behold, I made twelve pages, but this was only a part of the problem. I sat down to write these blogs and faced a similar issue. Even with text to speech, I still would stop occasionally, unable to continue. Naturally, because my brain works faster, I started thinking about these blogs, and what I would write. I thought about this subject for quite a while. I bounced around my own issues for a while before finally figuring out what to write. Teaching has not quite reached the 21st century.
Sure, we have 21st century technology in our classrooms, but the teaching style has yet to be fully innovated upon. Discussing this with another teacher, I spoke at how my phone could do speech-to-text and how amazing it was to speak several pages with little to no effort. In a way, you could equate my issue with a computer and its components. A computers CPU is very fast, couple that with the memory cache and it can process lots of information. Once you go outside the CPU, there is a speed decrease. Using the RAM, you go slightly slower, though the processing it still fast overall. Let's say though, that you read or write data to the hard-drive. Now the speed drops intensively (we assume this is a disk-based hard-drive). The system is no longer fast. At some times, this is how I feel. I cobble an idea together and as I start writing, it starts speeding away. Idea, where are you now? To make my point without rambling on further, I think that speaking and writing are two different areas in the brain, which seems to be not to far off of a conclusion. Read this article here (http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-writing-speaking-brain-study-20150513-story.html). Now let me touch back on teaching again. I remember, as some of you probably do, when all we had were overhead projectors in the classroom. Those felt like poison back then, and they still do, thinking about it now. What I hated most was math classes. Even in junior college, math felt like the class that never improved over the years. The teaching style is the same, class after class after class. What I believe is that classes (ESPECIALLY math classes) need to embrace new techniques for learning and work. Doing a presentation rather than ten-thousand tons of math busy work would be much more interesting than, well, ten-thousands tons of work that takes me forever to get done. It's slow and inefficient. Online is only a tad better. Group work in math would be great too (which is why this class is nice, more groups). Now I have not taken a math class yet at CSUMB and I hear (and see) that there is a "discussion" portion. So I will have to see what it's like. How about you? What are your experiences with writing, speaking, or math? I figure I should have at least one post about the election. No matter how much people don't want to hear or think about it. So, I've decided to speak about the Electoral College, which seems to be the debate in some circles around the country. I'll also present a For and Against perspective, just to make it balanced. So what is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is a group made of 538 electors who elect the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. Citizens of each state do not directly vote for the Presidential candidates; instead they choose electors, who dedicate their vote for particular candidates of a specific party. Each state is given a certain number of electors which is determined by the number of members of congress each state is entitled. The electoral college is broken up into a group of 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, and 3 electors from the district of columbia. The Presidential candidate that receives the majority, or absolute majority, of electoral votes is declared elected. The first stance is against the Electoral College. People do not vote for the President giving an unfair advantage to states with larger amounts of electors. It is possible for a candidate to not gain a single vote in 39 states and still win the election by decision of California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, or Virginia. Electors can change their vote: Few states have restrictions regarding electors and their ability to change their vote, allowing them to change their vote if they want. There is very little stopping an elector from changing their vote and misrepresenting the people. Winner take all doesn’t represent. Safe states will always vote for the same party so population decision will not reflect that of the people voting, but rather the electoral college's decision. The popular vote does not matter. A candidate can obtain 60% of the popular vote and still lose the election. In a previous election, one of the candidates acquired the needed electoral votes but lost the popular vote. The Electoral college should be removed to fix these issues. The Electoral college provides smaller states with recognition by the Presidential candidates. According to CNS News, over 90 percent of general election dollars are spent of swing states (http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/kevin-price/why-we-still-need-electoral-college). This may seem like a waste of effort for politicians, but because of swing states like Florida and Virginia, who may change party preference during an election, the states with few electors may provide the right amount of votes for the candidate to win. If the Electoral College was not present the Presidential candidates would have little reason to focus on every state within the US. Instead they would focus their efforts on the bigger and more influential states like California, Texas, and New York. Each state is important and plays an influential role during the election. Those for the electoral college recommend that the group continue to exist for the recognition of smaller and less powerful states. While the citizens do not directly affect the election, they do hold some importance for the the majority of the state and what electors are chosen for the Electoral College. Citizens may also not completely understand who they are voting for. The electoral college ensures that the decision that reflects the state is correctly chosen. What do you think? Are you for or against? Or do you have no opinion about it? Got a third option? Try me. I'll listen, or read in this case. Several weeks ago, I came across an article on, that's right, Facebook news about the carbon pollution level reaching the "point of no return". According to this article comma the carbon parts per million or PPM which is the number of carbon molecules in the atmosphere have gone above 400 PPM. To me this article felt completely bogus (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738?utm_content=bufferd6901&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer).
During a group discussion with our discussion groups I spoke to my group members about the atmosphere and climate change. I told them about a Bill Nye video I had once watched in Middle School. In the video, Bill Nye spoke about the climate and atmosphere. The key thing I saw is when he was talking about carbon emissions, took a filter, and placed it over a fake building producing emissions. Most of the group hadn't even considered the possibility placing a filter on a carbon producing system. I think there are many ways to reduce and remove carbon from the atmosphere. We just have to get smart about science. This is where things get more interesting. In another article from Facebook, this time from Bill Gates, is a report report on how scientists have been able to convert CO2 into a different chemical using nanotechnology. According to Popular Mechanics, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennesee discovered how to, and here's the good part, turn CO2 into a useful fuel: Ethanol. The process, which uses a combination of nanotechnology, and the elements of copper and carbon to produce ethanol, is extremely efficient and most importantly, cheap. It's scalable, too! I like the irony of removing pollutants from the environment, to create a burning fuel (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a23417/convert-co2-into-ethanol/?linkId=31295074). I'll begin with where this idea first took place. In an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, there is a crew member who was given a synthetic T cell in order to remove a sickness. However this T cell and the spreading to other members of the crew and caused some form of evolutionary reversion. Some months ago I considered the possibility that gene-editing could possibly produce the same effect in that somebody's gene edit could spread to another person. For example, if I were to have a gene edit to acquire red colored eyes and this edit somehow spread to someone else, causing them to receive red colored eyes. With the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 technique, I now believe that this is even more possible today.
As I understand it, the process of the CRISPR-Cas9 technique is quite simple. It works by combining a DNA cutting enzyme with a molecular guide which can be programmed, by inserting the target DNA, to tell the enzyme exactly where to cut. It trims away the unwanted part or parts of the host's DNA and inserts the new DNA strands. I'm not the only one who has taken note of this as a top US intelligence official has called gene editing a 'WMD' threat (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600774/top-us-intelligence-official-calls-gene-editing-a-wmd-threat/). Well I wouldn't call it that, though I may be wrong, it is certainly a concern given that the basic ingredients for CRISPR can be bought online for roughly $60. In China they have already performed and operation using the CRISPR technique. A man who had lung cancer received an injection to modify his immune cells to fight his cancer (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-16/crispr-gene-editing-tested-in-a-person-for-the-first-time/8029582). While this technique does appear useful, I can certainly see how it could be used in unethical circumstances. |
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