Live from the Nuke Free Zone

Regarding the Democratic debate to be held here at Drexel in two weeks, I last posted that I was pondering some questions to ask.  Here are some possibilities I’ve come up with; comments solicited:
1.) Thomas Jefferson exhorts us to “Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.’  What […]

I am currently working at Drexel University, which has recently been scheduled to host the October 30th Democratic Presidential debate. This means, presumably, that I may have the opportunity to ask a question.
Being a mathematician and educator by trade, I am particularly interested in questions on math, science, education, or combinations of these. […]

Hey, fans of vouchers! Hi there, charter school boosters! It sure is great to want the best education for your child. So guess what your hard-earned money is buying when you starve public schools of funds and send the kid to private school?
The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed […]

Say you’re a conscientious state government official who wants to increase your state’s global profile. One simple move: take your state’s web site, say www.utah.gov, and give a selected subset of that information in another language — say, taxes and work-force services, maybe driver’s licenses, a few other things that would be of interest to […]

Texas’ Governor Rick Perry has just signed a law ordering that schools deemed failing for four years in a row be taken over by outside entities, most likely private groups. This is about the most moronic idea I’ve ever heard; it forces dedicated staffers to give up and leave. Most likely any of them that […]

…because everybody needs a little touch of His Noodly Appendage now and then. Even those wacky creationists.

While the moment has not yet arrived according to the blog’s clock, as you read this article it will most likely be Pi Day.
What is Pi Day you ask?  I’m so glad you asked.  Well, we’ll pretend you asked.
Pi Day is March 14 (3/14 in the American notation, you see), and it’s an excuse for […]

Augh, what a wonderful example of science, journalism, and biases. Keep your eye on the ball:
The New York Times did a study on abortion notification laws. The headline and the start of the article was “Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told: For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors […]

You may see this headline from me again.  I intend to make it a theme.
In today’s post, we have a minor story from West Virginia that maybe doesn’t affect a lot of people’s lives.  But maybe somebody’s dead right now because a police chief thought (a) that because the heart attack victim was gay, he […]

Today’s linkery comes from Michael Bérubé, an instructor at Penn State University, who wrote late last month on the current state of academic freedom in the United States.
The obvious thing is this: the title of today’s presentation, “Recent Attacks on Academic Freedom: What’s Going On?” can be answered in a single sentence. Academic freedom […]