Author Archive: Paul Epps

High Dropout Rates for STEM Majors is NOT a Problem

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The University of Colorado has a $4.3 million grant to research the “problem” of 40 to 60 percent attrition rate among STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) majors. Someone is missing an obvious point here, which is that there should be a large dropout rate for STEM majors. Incompetent technologists and engineers create disasters. The music department, the English department, the philosophy department, etc., etc., can graduate their incompetent students without worrying that they’re going to build a collapsing bridge, blow up a space shuttle, disintegrate a Mars orbiter — you get the idea . . . Read more →

Thousand Oaks

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“Do you know how to get there?” “No. Did you bring the map?” “No.” “Didn’t you say before we left that you’d printed a map?” “I said I printed it but I didn’t say I was going to bring it along.” “Oh . . . well, we can call when we get out there. I know how to get to Thousand Oaks, I just don’t remember how to get to their house.” “Do you know the offramp from the freeway?” “Yes.” “So it can’t be too complicated then. I saw on the map it was just lefts and rights.” “Uh, isn’t any route to anywhere just lefts and rights?” Read more →

And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. — Anais Nin

Listen to me for a day . . . an hour! . . . a moment! lest I expire in my terrible wilderness, my lonely silence! O God, is there no one to listen? — Seneca, 4 BC

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. — David Hume

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” — Mary Anne Radmacher

Jerry Buss, 1933-2013

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I’m sad. As a lifelong Laker fan, I kind of feel like I knew the guy. He bought the Lakers in 1979, which means he was younger than I am today, and now he’s dead at the age of 80. I feel old. Dr. Buss was a USC alum. Fight on. R.I.P. Jerry Buss Read more →

Aside

A good outcome is not the same as a good decision.

Facing it — always facing it — that’s the way to get through. — Joseph Conrad, Typhoon

Online Porn May Make You Forget

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Pornographic Picture Processing Interferes with Working Memory Performance — Journal of Sex Research, 2012 Nov 20 Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen found that looking at internet porn has a negative effect on working memory. Wait a second . . . did I already post this link? Read more →

Mad Libs

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President Barack Obama’s speeches have a familiar ring these days — no matter if it’s guns, immigration or the budget. Tout what he’s already done. Say the public’s in his corner. Demand Congress do something. Lament Washington dysfunction. Lay out his own plan. Avoid details. Urge voters to keep up the pressure. Warn it won’t be easy. Bask in the applause. It’s the fill-in-the-blank approach to selling a presidential agenda: same template, just adjusted for the topic. — President Obama’s fill-in-the-blank sales pitch – Carrie Budoff Brown – POLITICO.com Read more →

Aside

Philosophical skepticism must be distinguished from ordinary incredulity . . .

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