A Brief Diversion
After you read today's installment of the WaPo Cheney series, which details the nauseating expansion of executive power and the creation of a torture regime (which you should), you may find yourself wanting to spend a few minutes thinking about something less horrific.
For that reason, it sure is good that the WaPo's editorial page is run by other, far less serious people. Time for a good laugh, though, as usual, at their expense.
There's an outstandingly bubble-headed op-ed by Slate writer Emily Yoffe on the subject of global warming. For reasons she never quite makes clear, she rejects the idea that global warming is something we should worry about, seeing it as some kind of absolutist nonsense.
Throughout the column, she rejects various scientific arguments, and suggests that they are part of some campaign to scare us. In her final paragraph, she sums up this theme:
Nor is it really funny that the Washington Post would give op-ed space for a column on global warming to someone who has absolutely no scientific qualifications. First, that's just sad, and second, the editor of that page lost all credibility long ago.
What's funny is that the woman who wrote that blistering shot about something being plotted on an X and Y axis was just last fall a self-admitted "math moron".
At Slate she published an entire article on her inability to do math, and her attempt, as a married adult mother of a fourth-grader, to improve her skills using Kumon Learning Center exercises designed for grade schoolers.
Man, that's funny. She can't balance her checkbook, she needed fingers(!) to subtract 5 from 13, and she's expecting me to believe that she can parse a climate study? Good one.
You know, I'm sure she's a nice person and all. And, through the Kumon exercises she was able to advance to a fifth-grade level. But I do think that, before I let someone lecture me about what can be plotted on X- and Y-axes, they ought to be able to actually understand the concept.
For that reason, it sure is good that the WaPo's editorial page is run by other, far less serious people. Time for a good laugh, though, as usual, at their expense.
There's an outstandingly bubble-headed op-ed by Slate writer Emily Yoffe on the subject of global warming. For reasons she never quite makes clear, she rejects the idea that global warming is something we should worry about, seeing it as some kind of absolutist nonsense.
Throughout the column, she rejects various scientific arguments, and suggests that they are part of some campaign to scare us. In her final paragraph, she sums up this theme:
In his new book, "The Assault on Reason," Gore denounces what he sees as today's politics of fear. Yet his own campaign of mass persuasion -- any such campaign -- is not amenable to contradiction and uncertainty. It's about fright and absolutes. But just because something can be plotted on an X and Y axis does not make it the whole truth.What's so funny? Yeah, well, I've gotten to the point where I find the knee-jerk rejection of global climate change kind of laughable on its face, but that's not it.
Nor is it really funny that the Washington Post would give op-ed space for a column on global warming to someone who has absolutely no scientific qualifications. First, that's just sad, and second, the editor of that page lost all credibility long ago.
What's funny is that the woman who wrote that blistering shot about something being plotted on an X and Y axis was just last fall a self-admitted "math moron".
At Slate she published an entire article on her inability to do math, and her attempt, as a married adult mother of a fourth-grader, to improve her skills using Kumon Learning Center exercises designed for grade schoolers.
Things weren't going well with my math placement test—things have never gone well for me on any math test. As I tried to solve 13 – 5, I lost track while counting on my fingers, and as I calculated 3,869 x 6, I couldn't remember the rules for carrying numbers. I decided to enroll in a math prep course when I realized I was unable to help my then fourth-grade daughter with her math homework. For this Human Guinea Pig—a column that requires a willingness to debase myself—I planned to go back to where numbers and I parted ways, to see if I could learn enough math to keep ahead of my daughter for a few more years.Ouch.
The placement test was to determine at what grade level my education would start. I took it at the Kumon Math and Reading Center in Bethesda, Md.—one of 26,000 such centers around the world at which more than 4 million children get after-school instruction. As this New York Times story makes clear, many American parents are sending their kids to Kumon because they are afraid the current math curriculum will produce idiots like me. My instructor, Lopa Shah, sat down next to me with my results. The red pencil marks that covered it, indicating wrong answers, were a remembrance of things not passed. Flunking math tests was such a regular part of my childhood that I have lived the rest of my life trying to avoid anything numerical. (I wouldn't dream of doing my own taxes. I've never tried to balance my checkbook. I can barely make change.) There were 60 questions on this test, and I got 15 of them wrong, placing me at the 2A level. What grade was that? I asked Shah.
"That would be first grade," she said in a neutral tone. I was in first grade during the Kennedy administration. I admired Shah's restraint in not laughing at someone who had made no mathematical progress since then.
Man, that's funny. She can't balance her checkbook, she needed fingers(!) to subtract 5 from 13, and she's expecting me to believe that she can parse a climate study? Good one.
You know, I'm sure she's a nice person and all. And, through the Kumon exercises she was able to advance to a fifth-grade level. But I do think that, before I let someone lecture me about what can be plotted on X- and Y-axes, they ought to be able to actually understand the concept.
posted by Paul at 11:15 AM |
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