As a professional educator working in the private industry, I can tell you that a lot of parents also cannot distinguish between "helping student understand principles better so student can do the homework independently" and "do homework for student." This can happen with poor tutors as well. If the "help" means the student doesn't understand the work enough to do it alone, it's not help. The student will then often end up in worse shape in the long run, as they won't understand future skills that the current skill is prerequisite to.

I live in Alberta. From 1965 to 2004, we climbed to having the #2 math performance in the world, second to Hong Kong and one notch above Japan. (At that time, matrix operations were still included in our semi-remedial math programs.) The gender gap was closing the entire time. Our standards have only dropped since then. As I said in another reply, that's a contributing factor, but it started more recently than the closing of the gender gap in this region.

That trend is out there, but started relatively recently compared to the closing of the gap. I also believe that will necessarily turn around at some point, as less competent local employees will force people hiring engineers and the like to hire from overseas in greater numbers than they are now. Something will have to give at some point in the near future.

As a math and science teacher, I've seen multiple studies on performance of different genders in math and science. There is a gap in North America, although it's closing rapidly. (In the past 40 years, men have gone from having 20% higher averages than women to having 2% higher averages than women. Evolution doesn't act that quickly; it's a purely social bias.) Men still perform slightly higher than women in this region because there are still teachers out there who expect more from male students and push them harder. In other words, if the teacher *expects* female students to get 60s and down and *expects* male students to get 70s and higher, then that teacher who sees a male and a female student with 68% averages, then the teacher will work with the male to improve his performance, but not put in the same effort with the female student. It's a horrible thought, but it's still happening out there. The same is true for race factors, for "learning disabilities" (which I would rather call "learning anomalies" but that's another story) and more.

Bottom line: there is a slight and closing gap between men and women in math and science in North America, not because there is any biological difference in this particular area, but because social biases that exist in the system are failing the female students more often than they are failing the male students.

Most Apple Maps issues were a side effect of an early launch. They thought they'd have another year with Google Maps, and development was incomplete, but they opted for poor navigation rather than no navigation. I find it about as effective as Google Maps for my region these days. They've had the time to make it the product they always wanted it to be.

When I first saw this headline in my Facebook feed, I assumed the source was The Onion. Wow.

Entirely possible. I used to mark assignments for a first-year University astronomy class, and about 6-7% of the students were upset that astrology wasn't included.

Write a script with a "dead man's switch." Store passwords in an encrypted file on a secure system. If you don't log on and issue some sort of "wait" command every 30 days or so, then passwords get emailed to an account whose password is stored on a phone. At the time the passwords are issued, it's bloody insecure, but it should work well enough to get into the systems and change the passwords to something else. Not a perfect system, of course. What happens with a 60 day coma? Passwords are accessible for at least 25 of them, but not to you, etc. Existence of the script and encrypted file on an email ready system means there's a vulnerable spot there, too. It's better than nothing, though, and doesn't involve lawyer fees.

Exactly. In addition to lacking personality, memories and learned talents, he's also going to be under tremendous pressure to live up to an impossible standard. Very few musicians stay as relevant as they used to be. A clone now could make Lennon-like music almost perfectly, and wouldn't be the pop culture phenomenon Lennon was because the music industry has changed. I cannot imagine circumstances in which a clone can have a healthy upbringing with no abnormal expectations.

I'm a teacher who was about to say what s/he said. Our students already use Google Docs for their work, so these make a great, cost-effective fit that eliminates a lot of the educational environment security headaches.

FYI, we circumvent the printing issues by having students share documents with staff accounts when they are ready to submit. The staff can either print or mark and comment online through the existing format, depending on whether a printout is really needed. Doesn't scale well for large student loads, but it's enough for us.

To heck with K-Mart. Shop smart: be an S-Mart!

Only in most institutions, not all. Look at the way marks are determined to find out. Marking on the curve is good for weeding students out, homogenizing professor performance, and not much else. If you find an institution that marks with criterion-referenced grading, then it's far more likely to be about education. Granted, this is a rule of thumb that only works for the top level of the food chain, and you can find exceptions to this idea very easily, but it's a start.

Hearing aides amplify all noises in the area. This is supposed to be selective, amplifying the selected conversation and damping out the rest. That's the new part, but to make that effective, you need to replace the current sensory input with the input from these.

Nope, particularly since we'd need to know exactly who put it there.

You've written a lot for new writers, including a book dedicated to writing scripts and numerous additional materials in things like the Babylon 5 script books. That said, it's unlikely you have said everything you think new writers need to hear, as those are usually context or lesson specific. Here's an open forum: if there is one thing that writers trying to launch careers should no, either about the writing process, the pitching process, the production process, or any other aspect of the writing industry that hasn't come out in your previous publications, what would it be?