I'm profoundly unconvinced.

While heeding the "will of the people" is one of the fundamentals of any "democratic" (all variations) government, I think we have plenty of examples where groups of people aren't necessarily smarter or more moral than individuals. For example, consider California's initiative system, which has created a mess of conflicting and impossible mandates.

Additional influences like the Dunning-Kruger effect only muddy the waters further. Everybody seems to think that direct democracy would be good for them, but bad for everyone else.

Except when the answer to that questions is "zombies."

to make a self-righteous post about how you don't use Facebook, and anyone who does is stupid.

I burned a good 5 minutes parsing that phrase as some variant of "rock-paper-scissors," and thinking "what could beat a rocket?"

It's important to remember that flailing != movement. The 2nd guy is moving his arms a lot more, but everything that he does is connected to movement in his torso (either playing out a movement that started in his torso or moving in opposition to it). As a result, his movements look more fluid and "connected" to what he's doing with the rest on his body.

The first guy is a poor example of flailing, because he's hardly moving anything at all. Nevertheless, if the arms aren't working in concert with the torso, then whatever the arms do looks disconnected (and creates a look of flailing).

I think this is part of the "hard to quantify" difference between an expert dancer and a beginner. Beginners are usually replicating what the see, without any understanding of what muscle groups need to be involved in the movement. This makes what they do appear very flat and mechanical. Expert dancers have the experience to know which muscles to engage when, making their movements look dynamic and fluid.

It seems like a good time to point to this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#

It was recorded a few years ago by a law professor at Regent University. Founded by Pat Robertson (700 club), Regent gained some notoriety over the Bush years as being the alma matar of a disproportionately large number of folks in the Bush administration (specifically the Justice Department).

I think it pretty thoroughly debunks the interferences you make about invoking the 5th amendment.

Let's not forget password recovery/reset either. If you have very restrictive password requirements, but very liberal recovery requirements, you've created a false sense of security.

My bank has all sorts of requirements on passwords: mixed case, numbers, punctuation, length, had to change every ___ time, couldn't reuse your last ____ passwords, etc. The password recovery page, however, amounted to something along the lines of "What is your father's middle name?", and even let you change the password right then (instead of being emailed a random password).

I guess enough techie folks complained, since they've recently made password recovery a little harder (you need to also add an account number and part of your SSN).

At some point in the future, I'm going to plagiarize this statement.

It just seemed polite to give you notice.

On the Media (a fantastic program if you haven't heard of it yet) covered this last month. Interview and transcript are here: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/26/03

The problem is that the concept of "doing" is ill-defined. Does one need to be a published author to qualify to teach a 10th grade English class? How about an Erdos number to teach an Algebra I class? One of my colleagues specializes in teaching "lower level" math kids. He's great at maintaining discipline in his classroom, and many of his students actually experience some success in math. It has been 20 years since he's taken Calculus, and he really doesn't know integration-by-parts any more. Should he be fired for his inability to "do"?

The cliche is fun to bust out whenever bad education news hits the airwaves, but I think it distracts from some of the real issues surrounding education and good vs bad teachers.