We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject.
— Thomas Aquinas (@AquinasQuotes) January 3, 2018
2017: The Year in Books
These are the books I read in 2017, roughly in the order listed. Not as many as I would have liked but I spent the first half of the year having a mental and physical breakdown. I’m back on track now.
The ratings are mine. They don’t represent a consensus of opinion.
Books of the Year: Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (fiction) and From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe (non-fiction).
Aside
A man can only be cosmopolitan up to a certain point . . .
Teaching Computer Science: It’s Not Easy to Teach a Subject in Which You Have No Training
A recent issue of Science has an article on the pipeline for computer science teachers . . .
The first sentence says, “It’s not easy to teach a subject in which you have no training.”
That could be the whole article, really. That’s about all you need to know about the current state of computer science instruction: It’s not easy to teach a subject in which you have no training.
Cameron Wilson, chief operating officer and president of the Code.org Advocacy Coalition, is quoted as saying, “It’s really hard to convince a computer science professional to give up a job that pays up to three times more to pursue teaching. And I don’t think we should.”
Wilson’s opinion that computer science classes should not be taught by someone who actually knows something about computer science is probably influenced by the fact that Code.org is one of the leading providers of training programs and online curricular resources for in-service teachers tasked with teaching computer science.
How would this “train a neophyte” scheme work in other academic areas?
Assuming you could provide a one- or two-week training workshop to prospective teachers, would you:
- Hire someone who has never played an instrument to teach a music class?
- Hire someone who has never picked up a drawing pencil to teach an art class?
- Hire someone who doesn’t speak Spanish to teach a Spanish class?
These all seem like absurd ideas with a very low ceiling on what you could hope to accomplish pedagogically. Why does anyone think it makes sense for computer science? Someone needs to explain that to me.
Putting non-practitioners in the CS classroom also requires, in addition to the teacher training, a second key component: the prefabricated curriculum.
Teachers are not able to design and teach a year-long class on a subject in which they have themselves only a week or two of experience, so Code.org and others offer packaged courses delivered to students online.
I’ve had an opportunity to see this in action. I volunteer two mornings a week at a local high school, helping out with the first period computer science class. It’s a mixed class, with most of the students taking AP Computer Science Principles, and a handful of kids taking an introductory programming class in Python.
The AP students are using UTeach, supplemented by the Berkeley BJC curriculum. The Python students are using CodeHS.
The teacher, a converted math teacher, does little to no independent instruction during the class period.
The material is too hard in my opinion for most people who are not programmers to read and understand and to figure out the assignments without a lot of help. Keep in mind that the teacher is also not a programmer.
The first two programming classes I took in college had a ~75 percent drop rate. Programming is hard but it can also be fun and beautiful. I don’t think a teacher who is not a programmer is able to convey that. Minus the beauty and fun, there’s nothing left but the difficulty.
I don’t see most students having what it takes to push themselves through difficult material delivered to them via a computer screen with no human interaction.
They give up and they blame themselves. I’m not smart enough for this. I don’t have what it takes.
It’s discouraging to see this because even kids who are not going to be programmers can learn useful ways of thinking about and solving problems from a computer science class . . .
- How to break down complex problems into manageable parts
- How to recognize patterns among and within problems
- How to recognize important information vs. irrelevant detail
- How to develop step-by-step solutions to a problem, or rules to follow to solve a problem
It’s a way of thinking that can’t be taught by someone who doesn’t genuinely think that way.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Vignette
Sara, 48, suffers from breast cancer, diagnosed three times in five years.
She has to stop teaching at school but engages actively in volunteer work.
Her environment praises her for her courage.
She helps other cancer patients in a respectful way to deal with their illness. This for her is also very rewarding.
Still, from time to time, mostly when Sara does not expect it, an ocean of tears comes up . . .
My Worries Are Few
I have the ability to face up to the disturbing facts of life, except pain, sickness, death, poverty, rejection, loneliness, guilt, shame, confusion, doubt, imperfection, meaninglessness, futility and evil.
Also fear of being laughed at and cruelty to animals.
Something I Learned About Time Zones
Something I learned about time zones on a visit to New Orleans: Louisiana is on Central Time, as are Mississippi, Alabama — and part of the Florida panhandle!
Jefferson Davis’s House
On a recent trip to New Orleans, we spent a night at the Beau Rivage Resort in Biloxi, MS.
Biloxi is also the site of Beauvoir, the former home of Jefferson Davis, now a museum and historical site.
Beauvoir is similar to a statue in that it’s a memorial to an eminent representative of the Confederacy, but surprisingly, even the most fanatical ideologue has not, to my knowledge, suggested that it be torn down . . .
Christmas In New Orleans
French Quarter
French Quarter – Cafe du Monde
French Quarter – Preservation Hall
French Quarter – Bourbon Street
Lafayette Cemetery #1
VooDoo BBQ
Beau Rivage Resort & Casino (Biloxi, MS)
Merry Christmas, New Orleans
I’ve been in and around New Orleans this week. No one has said “Happy Holidays” to me. “Merry Christmas” only.
People I Thought Were Dead
- Herb Alpert – trumpeter
- Max Baer Jr. – actor, “The Beverly Hillbillies”
- Barbara Bain – actress, “Mission: Impossible”
- Brigitte Bardot – actress
- Rona Barrett – gossip columnist
- Frank Borman – astronaut
- Roy Clark – musician
- Roger Corman – film producer
- Robert Crumb – cartoonist
- Bill Daily – actor
- Vic Damone – singer
- Angie Dickinson – actress
- Annette and Cecile Dionne – quintuplets
- Sam Donaldson – TV newscaster
- Hugh Downs – TV announcer
- Daniel Ellsberg – released the Pentagon Papers
- Barbara Feldon – actress
- Fannie Flagg – actress and game show panelist
- Larry Flynt – publisher of Hustler
- Whitey Ford – baseball pitcher
- A.J. Foyt – auto racer
- Ron Gallela – celebrity photographer, aka “paparazzo”
- Whitey Herzog – baseball manager
- Ernest Hollings – U.S. senator
- Cloris Leachman – actress
- Tom Lehrer – musical satirist
- Jerry Lee Lewis – singer and pianist
- G. Gordon Liddy – Watergate mastermind
- Rich Little – impressionist
- Peter Max – pop artist
- Kim Novak – actress
- Julie Newmar – actress
- Marion Ross – actress, “Happy Days”
- William Ruckelshaus – Nixon cabinet member
- Eva Marie Saint – actress
- Doc Severinsen – trumpeter and bandleader
- Jack Sheldon – singer and trumpeter
- George Shultz – cabinet member under Nixon and Reagan
- Lyle Waggoner – actor
- John Warner, U.S. senator and husband of Elizabeth Taylor
- Joanne Woodward – actress
- Herman Wouk – author
- Carl Yastrzemski – baseball player
Updates
- Brigitte Bardot – died 12/28/2025, age 91
- Frank Borman – died 11/7/2023, age 95
- Roy Clark – died 11/15/2018, age 85
- Roger Corman – died 5/9/2024, age 98
- Bill Daily – died 9/8/2018, age 91
- Vic Damone – died 2/11/2018, age 89
- Annette Dionne – died 12/26/2025, age 91
- Cecile Dionne – died 7/28/2025, age 91
- Hugh Downs – died 7/2/2020, age 99
- Daniel Ellsberg – died 6/16/2023, age 92
- Larry Flynt – died 2/10/2021, age 78
- Whitey Ford – died 10/8/2020, age 91
- Ron Gallela – died 4/30/2022 age 91
- Whitey Herzog – died 4/16/2024, age 93
- Ernest Hollings – died 4/6/2019, age 97
- Cloris Leachman – died 1/27/2021, age 94
- Tom Lehrer – died 7/26/2025, age 97
- Jerry Lee Lewis – died 10/28/2022, age 87
- G. Gordon Liddy – died 3/30/2021, age 90
- Peter Max – died 9/15/2026, age 88
- William Ruckelshaus – died 11/27/2019, age 87
- Jack Sheldon – died 12/27/2019, age 88
- George Shultz – died 2/6/2021, age 100
- Lyle Waggoner – died 3/17/2020, age 84
- John Warner, died 5/25/2021, age 94
- Herman Wouk – died 5/17/2019, age 103
See You in Hell: Cardinal Law
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Arrivederci Roma!
This is a tough one . . . hypocrites go in the Eighth Circle with frauds, but rapists go into the Seventh Circle for the violent.
Anyway, Cardinal Law says hi.
How appropriate that he was able to die before the end of 2017, when the Dictionary.com Word of the Year was “complicit.”
See you in Hell!
Likes and Dislikes
Likes
Dogs, books, spicy food
Dislikes:
Systems of thought that reduce the richness of human lives to impersonal laws, systems and numbers. Oxford commas.
The script of life is so unspeakably beautiful to read because death looks over our shoulder. — Martin Buber
Is Healthcare a Right or an Entitlement?
That’s the title of a lengthy article on LinkedIn in which the author makes the following argument:
- I had to spend more than $30,000 on cancer treatment.
- Therefore, healthcare is a right, not an entitlement.
Because having a “right” to something implies that you have the right to force another person to work and pay for that thing. Someone else must exert positive effort to help you – and not because you make it worthwhile for that person to exert that effort on your behalf, but because the government will ultimately imprison him or her if he or she refuses to supply you with that to which you have a “right.”
You can add a level of abstraction, i.e., “the government should pay for my healthcare” sounds more appealing than “another person should pay for my healthcare” but where do you think government gets the money to pay for things?
The article also offers this: Prisoners get free healthcare and shouldn’t we get the same rights as prisoners?
Of course, prisoners give up a lot of rights in exchange for free healthcare but if you think it’s a good tradeoff, commit a crime and go to prison.
If we, as a country, did what they do in countries with “free” healthcare, that is, add up the cost of everyone’s healthcare and then split the bill, most of us would pay more than we do now, the reason being that a disproportionate amount of healthcare spending goes to people who are old and/or sick.
We’d overpay most of our lives for the privilege of possibly underpaying if and when we get old.
If you had the bad fortune of getting cancer, you’d pay less than you would with the current system, but if you don’t get cancer you’d pay more, because you’d have to pick up your share of the cost for everyone who does get cancer.
There is at least one potential cost-saving option of putting the government in charge of healthcare spending and that is that if you’re very old or very sick, you’re not going to get all that technology and all those drugs to maybe keep you going for another couple of years. It’s too expensive, so we’re going to let you die.
Berkeley Sunset
Notes on Existential Well-Being
I’m taking an online class on existential well-being . . . posting some notes and thoughts:
Well-being implies physical health, comfort, pleasure.
It is also essential for human beings to have relationships with other people and to have a place in society.
We speak of personal well-being when a person is able to develop their talents and feel at peace with him or herself.
Beauty, compassion, truth, love — these are experiences of the “life force” or the “spirit.” In these spiritual experiences we transcend our limited self. We become part of something bigger and participate in universal qualities that nourish and enhance life.
We are conscious of the physical, the social, the personal and the spiritual dimensions of human experience. We make no hierarchy between these dimensions.
We recognize that human life is also characterized by suffering, pain and many limitations. We acknowledge that because of limitations, we are challenged to use our full potential to realize our physical, social, personal and spiritual existence in our given situation.
What Did You Think “Woke” Meant?
It's weird that sweeping, prejudicial generalizations about race, gender and sexual orientation are now offered by some and accepted by others as woke. https://t.co/A8udKbtVh6
— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) December 12, 2017
Year in Search 2017
The annual Google search trends are available for 2017.
A couple of surprises to me:
- The third most searched for person in the world (behind Matt Lauer and Meghan Markle) was Nadia Toffa, whom I’ve never heard of.
- The most searched for “How To” item was “How to make slime.”
See You in Hell, Ed Lee
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Ed Lee was the mayor of San Francisco, a sanctuary city.
My plan was to have Ed shot to death by an illegal alien but he outsmarted me by dying of a heart attack before I could put all the pieces together.
See you in Hell . . .