Lovers Offline

“Lovers Offline”

Anonymous, Telegraphic Journal, January 15, 1875.

(written by a telegraph clerk on the back of a message form)

In times that are over, full many a lover

Was won by the power of electrical fire;

There was working; then sporting -- conversing, then courting,

And letters by post followed wooing by wire.

Telegraph Vignette uncredited from
A Brief History of Communications
by IEEE Communications Society, 2002. 

The couples then mated are closer related,
And many a one who was helped in his work,

By patience, attention, and care beyond mention,

Has found a kind helpmeet in his fellow clerk.

But, now, things are changing, stern rules are estranging

The workers, and striving all likings to baulk;

Lest people should choose them, and Government lose them,

"The Staff, on the wires, are forbidden to talk!"

Odd moments of leisure, once given to pleasure,

Are spent in dull idleness through the day;

And kept thus asunder, can anyone wonder

If patience, at times quite exhausted, gives way?

It is so annoying, one might be enjoying

The cosiest chat with the nicest of friends;

But there's always the fear now that somebody's near now,

And "taking us down from the slip" at both ends.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

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She's Such a Geek

Natalie Portman, Danica McKellar, Felicia Day

Ma Kiley: Railroad Telegrapher

Where All the Children are Above Average: Advocating for the Gifted

If the Flynn Effect is valid, then public education as we have known it must change – and probably changed already. Identifying the problem (if it exists) and then marketing solutions requires the selfsame creative thinking for which the gifted have been identified.  The first challenge is that the definition of “gifted” is highly nuanced and might be intractable.  Creating a collective concept for a wide assortment of very many unusual individual cases might be counterproductive.  Two recent books demonstrate that experts who study gifted children find the results they seek. In other words, when it comes to social prejudices, scientific research is just confirmation bias supporting the attribution fallacy.

Growing Up Gifted (Seventh Edition) by Barbara Clark (Pearson 2008) is basically a textbook for teachers.  It also can serve parents, and perhaps gifteds, as an educated, intelligent mainstream guide.  The book opens with a section of five chapters on understanding gifted education and talent development.  The last two sections present existing educational processes in school and suggest models for creating and maintaining school programs.  Prof. Clark is widely recognized as an advocate for gifted education.  However, she also accepts the basic premises of public education.  Prof. Clark never questions the pseudo-science of Asperger’s Syndrome. Also, if a gifted child is an “underachiever” then the solution is to find ways to motivate them to do more and better of what others have decided is best. 

And that might be true in many cases.  But those are cases, not populations. 

The basic flaw in her thinking is confusing a taxonomy with a remedy.  Ultimately, she has many good ideas to explain her topic, for instance these presented to the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented.  But who will implement them? Even this association is for the gifted not of the gifted.  I believe that gifted and talented teachers are best able to provide for the exceptional or advanced learner. 

Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them by David Anderegg (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin 2007) slays an array of little dragons that plague nerds.  Dr. Anderegg obviously is an advocate. At the same time, though, he also seeks to deconstruct the concept of “nerd.”  Make no mistake: it is a schoolyard insult.  Whether it (and “geek”, etc.) can subsume other meanings is not clear.  So, the book is ambivalent, at once saluting nerds yet also denying that they exist.  Anderegg covers a lot of ground.  The book reads like transcribed lecture notes.  Unlike Clark, he does not buy into the theory of “Asperger’s Syndrome”. 

Citing Richard Hofstadter, Anderegg ties the prejudice against nerds to the broad anti-intellectual streak in American culture perhaps born (if not conceived) in the Jackson-Adams presidential campaign of 1824, Emerson's "American Scholar" address and Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  Coming into the present, the boy mechanic who works on cars is not a nerd; the one who builds computers is.  The American male is man of action, not a man of thought. 

David Andergg, Ph.D

That reveals the autobiographical theme of this book, if the congruence between the cover and the picture of the author do not suggest this.  Anderegg’s work is about boys.  The Boy Scouts have four citations in the Index; the Cubs Scouts even get one. The Girls Scouts are mentioned once in passing (along with Boy Scouts); the Brownies do not appear. 

Anderegg does offer hope for change in the broader culture.  He cites the television shows NUMB3RS and The Beauty and the Geek. (Launched in 2007, The Big Bang Theory could not appear here.)  He also holds Harry Potter up as a paradigm.  Potter looks the part, of course; but Potter is an athlete.  His prowess at Quidditch is commanding.  (Anderegg ignores Potter’s contests against Voldemort and the forces of darkness.)

On CNN’s “Schools of Thought” blogs for November 14, 2012, Carolyn Coli presented “Ten Myths About Gifted Students and Programs for the Gifted.”  Her Myth #9: It never hurts gifted students to teach others what they already know. She pointed out correctly: “Most gifted students do not know how to tutor others. They often are frustrated that struggling students don’t understand what they perceive as easy.”  Among the replies was this two days later from Andrea Saylor:

“They wanted to test my daughter for "gifted" and I opted out. I didn't want her to be "different" from the other students. She was shy by nature. She tutored otther students and went on to be valedictorian of her graduating class. She went on to get her Masters in Psychology. She now tests students for "gifted" "special needs" "autism" etc. Funny how things turn out.”

That exchange is an example of the complexity of the issue.  Both writers were correct.  The overarching explanation is that we are all individuals and generalizations about us necessarily fail at some level.  With children who are especially talented, this is starkly apparent.  “One size fits all” is not the problem: one size may not even fit two.

As Carolyn Coli pointed out, contrary to myth not all children are gifted.  However, children do learn; and many will rise to an intellectual challenge.

What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they'll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa. "Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction" on Dv!ce here. 

 That story raises basic questions about the nature of public schooling in America, for gifteds or normals alike. 

Previously on Necessary Facts
"She's Such a Geek!"
Nerd Nation: Portman, McKellar, and Day
"Big Bang Theory" vs. Modern Philosophy
Observable Genius

The Big Whimper of Modern Philosophy

The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Aristotle, Locke by Dean A. Kowalski, editor (John Wiley & Sons, 2012). 

The book is not a total loss: some interesting points, tidbits of knowledge, and some amusement are to be found.  If you love the show, you can probably stand most of this book. Overall, this was a big whimper.

These seventeen essays come mostly from professors of philosophy.  It is part of a “pop culture and philosophy” series that includes South Park and Philosophy, and The Big Lebowsky and Philosophy, among 28 titles, with more announced, including The Simpsons and Philosophy.  The non-judgmental range of titles is internally consistent with the post-modernist presentations in this book.  

The book starts out well with “Aristotle on Sheldon Cooper: Ancient Greek Meets Modern Geek” by Greg Littman (professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville).  “Should you live like Sheldon Cooper? Think hard because you don’t have the luxury of not making a choice.  Fourteen billion years after the Big Bang, evolution has finally produced a type of animal, human beings, that must choose how it will live.”  From there, entropy takes over and the observations, opinions, and “thoughts” have less potential.

Chapter 2 by editor Dean A. Kowalski does draw on The Nicomachean Ethics to analyze whether and to what extent Sheldon Cooper and the others are, indeed, friends.  In discussing science – as important to this show as alcohol was to Cheers – Jonathan Lawhead (doctoral candidate at Berkeley) taught me something I that I did not know: the word “science” was coined by William Whewell in 1834 for the activities previously called “natural philosophy.”  In point of fact (though Lawhead himself fails to note this) capitalism made science possible.  That explains the largely anti-science, anti-scientist slant of these essays.  The anti-capitalist assumptions center on the character of Stuart the comic book store owner, whom Adolphus Mackonis assumes is necessarily beneath the physicists in his grasp of truth (Chapter 12: "I am Afraid You Couldn’t be More Wrong"). 

None of the authors seems to appreciate why the show is so successful.  As philosophers (a few social scientists), they generally sneer at knowledge and those who pursue it.

Grad student W. Scott Clifton attempts to explain why it is permissible to laugh at Sheldon.  Clifton misses the laughter directed at (and with) all of the characters.  Clifton accepts the pseudo-science which places “Asperger’s Syndrome” on a continuum leading to “autism.”  (Dr. Hans Asperger was an Austrian nazi whose work was approved by the US military occupation of Germany because the Army intelligence interrogators thought that it was perfectly all right to socialize “little professors” by marching them through the woods singing songs just like the Boy Scouts they all were.)

To W. Scott Clifton, the question must be whether it is moral to laugh at Sheldon (Leonard, Raj, and the others), because he cannot see us laughing with them.  This ignorance is also reflected in Janelle Pötzsch’s essay on Wittgenstein.  Sheldon is supposedly an object of our derisive humor when he insists on literal meanings of common phrases.  “How have you been,” Penny asks.  Sheldon replies: “Well, my existence is a continuum, so I’ve been what I am at each point in the implied time period.”  For Pötzsch the obvious humor is that Sheldon Cooper misunderstands the common phrases of social engagement.  In point of fact, the humor here is that “normal” people (personified by Penny) do not understand the ambiguities they parrot when they echo what they hear without analyzing the content.  “The four corners of the Earth… sunrise, sunset …to catch a cold…to fall in love…”  (War on terror… war on drugs… homeland security… Patriot Act… public education… majority rule… guaranteed health care… family values… common sense... the five senses...)

In Chapter 9 CUNY philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci says that the humor comes from the fact that the boys attempt to apply the methods of science to all of life and life’s problems.  But that is not the case.  The humor comes from their means of application, as when the Three Stooges labor as plumbers or build a (functioning) airplane.  The task is valid – science works – but it is only that the boys are self-limited -- as are we all – or it would not be funny.  Humor is only another path to catharsis.  For catharsis to happen, you must be able to see yourself in the place of the hero. 

Obviously (and tragically) these philosophers do not see themselves as people of the mind, gaining, extending, and applying knowledge.  Rather, they are hooligans of the ivy tower, bullies who pick on nerds, only instead of hanging out in alleys and locker rooms, they occupy university classrooms. 

That those rooms are lighted, heated (or cooled), furnished and finished must seem to be some sort of metaphysical given to the writers of this anthology.  That without Sheldon, Leonard,  Amy, and the others--even Penny who brings them the food they do not prepare--they would be worse off than savages seems never to dawn upon them. 

This ignorance is not happenstance.  As Ayn Rand cogently pointed out time and again, philosophy has consequences.   Doctoral candidate in political philosophy Ruth E. Lowe displayed typical ignorance in Chapter 13 (on tolerance and toleration) when she says that “scientists told us the Earth was flat.”  They did not.  Moreover, numismatic evidence shows that ancient people knew that the Earth is a sphere. Likewise, Mackonis seems to think that if a statement is 80% likely to be true, then this somehow creates multivalued logic with an included middle, blanking out on the meaning of the claim that something is 80% likely means the claim is exactly that, and not .8 x .8 x .8 x… ad infinitum. The metaphysical altertive must be  A or non-A, even if A is a statement of probability with level of confidence and a margin of error.  

Previously on Necessary Facts:

• Nerd Nation 1.0 Big Bang Theory, NCIS, and NUMB3RS
• Nerd Nation 2.0: Danika McKeller, Natalie Portman, and Felicia Day 
• Nerd Nation 3.0: Dungeons and Dragons is Mainstream 
• Nerd Nation 4.0: Even GQ Says Smart is Sexy
• Nerd Nation 4.5: Mayim Bialik
• Book Review: She's Such a Geek!  

She's Such a Geek!

“What does it feel like to be a female in a male-dominated industry? I have nothing to compare the experience to, having never been a female in a female-dominated industry or a male in any industry at all.” – Devin Kyle Grayson.

She’s Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, & Other Nerdy Stuff, edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders (Seal Press, Avalon Publishing, 2006) delivers 24 autobiographical vignettes about growing up, working, and living as a woman noted for, and often defined by, her relationship to one or more STEM studies: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  The editors (who also contributed) selected these stories from among 200 entries. 

Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, editors.

The editors note that in 2001, “56% of bachelor degrees in science and engineering went to women, but women hold only 25 percent of jobs in science and engineering. More women than men are graduating in the sciences but a hostile job market and chilly graduate programs are keeping them from achieving their goals.” 

That correlates well with blind studies reported on this blog, October 2  showing that in university science laboratories, even women managers discriminate against women applicants.  Moreover the male attitudes that have not changed include a deeper problem of condescension, the old-fashioned gentleman’s insistence on protecting a woman from physical work and physical risk.  (“The Dress,” by Diana Husmann.)

Nonetheless, the plural of anecdote is not data; and the plurality of anecdotes here may call the data into question.  Each story is unique.  Draw your own generalizations. 

For myself, I see that the private sector rewards what the university does not. (See “The Making of a Synchotron Geek,” by Corie Ralston, and “Suzy the Computer versus Dr. Sexy,” by Suzanne E. Franks, and “Geek Interrupted” by Jean Shreve.)  Small universities and liberal arts colleges appreciate what Big Name Research Institutions do not.  (“Professor in a Circuit Board Corset,” by Ellen Speritus.)  Life often takes you places you did not imagine when your focus was on the SATs.  (“Job Security,” by Kirsten Abkemeier, “Universe: the Sequel,” by Aomaya Shields, and “All Our Boys go to the IT Industry in America,” by Roopa Ramamoorthi.) 

Yet within each of these 24 narratives are many more commonalities and differences, any of which could be used to draw thin conclusions or question broad generalizations.  That, to me, is the ultimate lesson here: statistics about populations hide the realities of individuals.  

Be that as it may, within the complex array is a core reality: “Females have made up nearly half of the science classes I’ve taken ever since [high school], right up through graduate school.” But although 40% of her peers are women only two of the grads and post docs who deliver seminars are women. “Here’s what really made me feel awful: I didn’t notice this lack of women speakers for over a year. … If I’ve interacted with women working in science across the world, across cultures, and religions, how could I fail to notice their absence right here at home?”   The answer(s) might be highly nuanced.

My wife is not the girl I married.

This story opens with her on vacation with family friends for her thirtieth birthday. They ask about her work. (Doctorate studying nucleosomal proteins).  They ask if she has a boyfriend. (No.) “It’s because you’re too smart.” (“Sex and the Single (Woman) Biologist,” Nina Simone Dudnik.)  Of course, this theme repeats in several other stories: boys don’t like girls who are too smart; or the ones who do are other nerds in engineering; sometimes even they do not.  Even so, this cannot unify all of the narratives because several of the women are lesbians; and others simply are not challenged or perplexed by their relationships with men - whether professional or romantic (or both).

Four biographies come under the rubric "Geek Interrupted" including an eponymous entry by Jean Shreve.  Here, too, is a core reality that cannot explain more.  Kristin Abkemeier's passion for art granted higher status to her physics until she worked for a dysfunctional company that ultimately (as we say) "extended her opportunities."  She closes with this: "As I sat down and began my own drawing, I smiled. I'd seen these shapes before in many physics problems I'd solved. their symmetries representing repeating cells or wires or atomic nuclei.  But today, those shapes were the building blocks of my new life as an artist."  (Actually, in that, she is not alone.  Several others in this anthology also embrace fine arts.)  Elizabeth Severson drew an undergraduate advisor who did not help her plan for graduate school and from the subtext Severson had some other problems.  The final tally finds her at an insurance company.  "I'll always be a math geek because I'll always be proud of what I learned and excited to learn more,  and I'll always want to share that pride and excitement with anyone who'll stand still long enough to listen."  Aomawa Shields was on a trajectory for a doctorate in astronomy until she hit a neutron star of a professor who told her that she should consider another career... which she did... and then by another path, she returned to blend in her passion for acting and skills with computers to work at the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The last seven sketches come from the far side of STEM and the mainstream of nerd: gaming and comics.  Perhaps even more than the others, these offer multidimensional projections of gifted, talented, and motivated (read:  driven) people. 

Quinn Norton (“Dreaming in Unison”) discovered that sleeping with several members of her guild only gave them all a reason to ask her to leave.  But she found a LARP (live action role playing) club.  As “Chaot” the vampire, running the streets, she thought she heard her playmates.  She climbed a tree to a second story garage where two families stood by their cars, children running about while the grown-ups reviewed the movie from which they had just come.  She leapt the barrier.

“I, in all my weirdness, appeared out of nowhere and walked quickly by them.   The parents never noticed me, but the kids did. They looked at where I’d come from, and then at me. They crouched closer to their parents and clutched one another. I looked over at them, opened my eyes wide, and gave them a slightly snarled smile.
“They followed me with their eyes as I walked down the stairs. They never saw Quinn; they never even saw Quinn playing Chaot.  All they ever saw or knew was Chaot, mad vampire, coming from and going to nowhere.  With a mysterious grin, Chaot had given the lie to the boring world their parents described, where everything stays the same in the dark as it does in the light.”

Previously on Necessary Facts
Where All the Children are Above Average
Nerd Nation: McKellar, Portman, and Day
Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers
World Peace through Massive Retaliation