A lot of that's true, but I'm not sure how you think public money passes through universities to textbook companies? (In reality, it's students paying textbook companies directly.)

The thing about the Pythagorean Theorem is completely true and well-documented (by maybe one or two hundred years). Pretty sure it's in a sidebar to the college algebra text I teach out of.

Wikipedia: "In India, the Baudhayana Sulba Sutra, the dates of which are given variously as between the 8th century BC and the 2nd century BC, contains a list of Pythagorean triples discovered algebraically, a statement of the Pythagorean theorem, and a geometrical proof of the Pythagorean theorem for an isosceles right triangle. The Apastamba Sulba Sutra (ca. 600 BC) contains a numerical proof of the general Pythagorean theorem, using an area computation. Van der Waerden believed that "it was certainly based on earlier traditions". Boyer (1991) thinks the elements found in the ulba-stram may be of Mesopotamian derivation.[67]... Pythagoras, whose dates are commonly given as 569–475 BC, used algebraic methods to construct Pythagorean triples..."

[67] Carl Benjamin Boyer (1968). "China and India". A history of mathematics. Wiley. p. 229.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#History

There's all kinds of examples, maybe more often the case than not, that mathematical principles get named after someone other than the original discoverer. It doesn't even require "forgotten knowledge" or anything like that, just some kind of power relationship at play. In fact, Stigler's Law of Eponomy (named after Stephen Stigler, Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Statistics of the University of Chicago) states, "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." See also: Matthew Effect and Boyer's Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy

Here's professor Richard Lipton writing on that particular subject:

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/why-is-everything-named-after-gauss/ ... but obviously the other stuff mentioned at the conference is total looney-tunes.

That's actually one of the best, most concise things I've ever seen written on the subject (and I have degrees in philosophy and math and teach statistical hypothesis testing). Thanks so much for posting that.

Well, there's basically nothing preventing people from getting a high school diploma in the U.S.; that's kind of the problem. There are no costs to the student, it's compulsory until age 18 (some exceptions granted for "home schooling" adherents), it's more-or-less disallowed to fail students or hold them back a grade, and standards have become so low that the high school diploma is considered to be of negligible value.

As an example in New York City (where I am now), the public high schools now boast about a 64% graduation rate [1], but something like 80% or more of those graduates cannot pass a 7th-grade algebra test on entrance to the open admission college [2] (at which point about 20% graduate from that 2-year college). In fact, the majority of graduates don't even have basic arithmetic skills (like knowing times tables, negative numbers, adding fractions, multiplying decimals), and large numbers also need a few semesters of remediation in junior-high level reading & writing skills in English.

[1] http://nypost.com/2014/12/18/nycs-high-school-graduation-rate-jumps-to-64-percent/
[2] http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-04-03/news/system-failure-the-collapse-of-public-education/

So I'm assuming that in Denmark (et. al.) colleges can still take the high school diploma as legitimate proof of mastering those basic skills? Because here we can't. The open-admission community colleges are held out (by politicians, etc.) frequently as a recovery and fix-it shop for the products of high schools who don't really have basic skills. And in fact the pressure is building all the time to remove even Algebra as a required proficiency at the college level, because the community college graduation numbers would then double or triple overnight. [3]

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html

From that last article: "'There are students taking these [algebra] courses three, four, five times,' says Barbara Bonham of Appalachian State University. While some ultimately pass, she adds, 'many drop out.'". (Personally I've met students taking the basic algebra course for the sixth or seventh time where I teach). So whenever the "free college" proposal comes up, the first thing that pops into my mind is, what is the cutoff for how many times the state pays for a re-take of basic algebra? I am without question 100% all for free college, but it goes without saying that there must some criteria applied, because no body can afford infinite re-takes of junior-high level classes. Right?

Citation? Or just urban myth?

"More proof the US defense industry has nothing to do with defending America"

http://pando.com/2014/12/18/the-war-nerd-more-proof-the-us-defense-industry-has-nothing-to-do-with-defending-america/

I am personally highly in favor of the Scandinavian model. However, those generous tuition-free opportunities are inseparable from the admission requirements on the page immediately before (language requirements, minimum proficiency levels, minimum grades, minimum GPA):

http://studyindenmark.dk/study-options/admission-requirements

Where I teach we have "open admissions" (anyone with a high school diploma is guaranteed admission), but the students are responsible for finding funding (loans, grants, or out-of-pocket) to pay for it. Actually in the 70's, to my understanding, we were briefly no-tuition for a year two, but it wasn't sustainable. Anyway, the great majority of students we currently have could not meet the academic admission requirements in Denmark. So making college free here would realistically mean cutting off a large number of people from accessing college (which isn't crazy because the success rate currently stands at around 25% here).

So ideologically there'd be a pretty big argument over how cruel we were being not letting absolutely everybody attend college. The American model in many ways tends to be throw everyone to the wolves and a small number of the strong will survive, and we can pat ourselves on the back that everyone had an equal opportunity (for both students AND teachers).

Certainly they/we should have that right. But of course here in America, it's pretty much par for the course that any opportunity to screw the little guy is taken as a point of pride in the last 50 years or so.

"Just make all the STEM programs FREE."

I know this wasn't the main thrust of your comment, and I agree with everything else in it. But whenever people say "make college free" I find that they're submerging critical questions about for whom, and under what circumstances, it's free.

Free for whom? Are there residence or citizenship requirements? Are there age requirements? Are there entrance requirements? Do they get free housing? Do they get free food? Do they get free health care or insurance? Do they get free travel? (For several of these: if "yes" then you'll get a bunch of scammers gaming the system, if "no" then only people with a certain wealth level can take advantage.) Are there criteria they must meet to stay in the program? If they fail those criteria, is there allowance or incentive to pay out-of-pocket for the remainder of the program? For how long?

First that comes to mind is New York state (where I live), where the Taylor Law makes it illegal:
"One of the most controversial parts of the Taylor Law is Section 210, which prohibits New York state public employees from striking."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Law

Example of legal punishments handed out a few years ago when transit workers went on strike in NYC:
http://www.labornotes.org/2012/01/public-employees-need-right-strike

Other states are not quite so codified; but here's a ruling in California that establishes "essential" workers cannot strike, including police & firefighters, possibly nurses and teachers:
http://www.slotelaw.com/articles/public-employees-right-strike-clarified-california-supreme-court

More lunatic alarmist nonsense like got us into Iraq and every other endless war in the Middle East and Asia.

The million deaths is a ridiculous scare-mongery figure you pulled out of your ass; even if North Korea had the same death rate as the United States, you would expect 4 million deaths over 20 years just naturally anyway (population 24 million * 800 deaths per 100,000 people * 20 years ~ 4 million).

Washington in the Farewell Address: "As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils!... Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?" ... to say nothing of wars in fucking Asia, which he would never have even dreamed we'd be stupid enough to get involved with.

"...to blackmail them not to release a movie about Kim Jong Un."

Well, there's your flawed assumption right there. The stated goal of the hackers was explicitly not that until a few weeks went by and the media became determined to whip the North Korea story.

"But in their initial public statement, whoever hacked Sony made no mention of North Korea or the film. And in an email sent to Sony by the hackers, found in documents they leaked, there is also no mention of North Korea or the film... “[M]onetary compensation we want,” the email read. “Pay the damage, or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole. You know us very well. We never wait long. You’d better behave wisely.”... It was only on December 8, after a week of media stories connecting North Korea and the Sony film to the hack, that the attackers made their first reference to the film in one of their public announcements."

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/evidence-of-north-korea-hack-is-thin/

For rhetorical purposes, I would not have posed that as a question.

First thing: I came here to say that video games have one significant disadvantage, in that the games (rules, if you like) are not stable; the publishers change them every few years in order to boost the revenue stream. The rules to video games are generally not in the public domain, unlike common sports. They are controlled by a single publisher interest. And the hardware quickly changes and becomes unavailable, too (or at least requires an emulator). So that would be my biggest dispute with video games being a sport -- they're constantly becoming defunct in terms of the rules, platforms, and access.

Second thing: But let's put that aside and focus on a snapshot of some video game at a particular moment in time. I used to work at Papyrus, publisher of NASCAR Racing for the PC in the 90's, we were developing and negotiating for a real-life NASCAR-sanctioned video racing league, and of course we had an in-house league every week that was very serious. (Most of the principals are still continuing that work at iRacing.com now.) We still needed an after-race adjudication committee to go over replays and make judgements about unsportsmanlike behavior -- who was at fault for a wreck, could one have been avoided, did someone stop-and-go a restart (I remember a huge argument one week about that one), etc. Maybe in some other game you'd establish out-of-the-box rules for behavior like not pulling out the ethernet cable, not flooding the chat box with offensive messages, not shouting verbally in the playing space to confuse other players, etc. You'll never entirely get away from the need for some kind of human judgements on fair play. Frankly that falls in the rather large category of geek fantasies that tech solves all social problems when it doesn't.

Pretty well put, I mostly agree, and am glad you wrote that. One point on your very last statement: do keep in mind that for many public and infrastructure unions (like police, government admins, teachers, bus drivers, etc.) it's been made illegal to go on strike by law, or as part of a contract required by the employer. I agree that that pretty much takes the possibility of fair negotiations off the table.