University professor just now realizes some very basic things about education. What this means for your weekend at 11.

You're presuming that these people are al qaeda members. This type of presupposition of guilt is not part of any criminal justice system.

In World War 2, it was pretty easy to identify members of the enemy forces because the sides were more clearly defined. "War on terror" is very murky and it's not so easy to tell who's an enemy combatant, right? This is why you'd need evidence before detaining people indefinitely. There was also an end to World War 2, but there will not be an end to a war on the concept of terrorism. A few days ago, Obama said in some impromptu remarks that Bradley Manning had broken the law. This has not been established by the organ that properly establishes guilt. But if the commander in chief says someone is guilty, that doesn't taint the process? Was the president getting involved in military commissions back in the day by calling verdicts in advance to the press?

Maybe it was just bad phrasing, but the underlying concept remains. All these actions (in Manning's case, just for example) are taken under the presumption of guilt.

As unattractive as those options are, only one of them is legal. Part of having a constitutional government with elected leaders is that the law supersedes anyone's desires to the contrary. If the founders had wanted the president to have the powers of royalty they would have written them in. Or left room for them. This is explicitly not the case. What else can we call detaining people in an extralegal prison based purely on the say-so of the President or forces under his command? This is one branch of government playing the role of two branches, and violates the checks and balances fundamental to the system. As another poster points out, the military base at Guantanamo Bay is not part of the criminal justice system.

Well I wasn't talking about watching a CGI simulation of whatever, but an actual film of something. That is, use video and tools to analyze something that you built. This makes it easier to start analyzing found video that you didn't take yourself. When video was made available of the big oil spill last year, we spent a little time in the Calc classes trying to think of ways to model it. That didn't pan out but I don't think it was wasted time.

And I'm exactly like this girl you apparently know who believes that raising animals with the purpose of killing them is cruel.

Mr. Gates has great intentions, and he should therefore beware of creating monocultures in his various avenues of venture philanthropy. The public health work is admirable, and the foundation's efforts in education are less so. Full disclosure: I'm a teacher union guy. But, my objection to the Gates-Broad-Walton education agenda is that there's no basis for it other than groupthink. That is, it fails your standard of money going to things that actually work. Without getting too far off topic, let me link this article from Dissent magazine:

There's more right after that that's also interesting. I admit that it's probably difficult for one person with a lot of money to encourage diversity of thinking when everyone is beholden to them for their research money. Or maybe it's just hard for me to think of ways.

I encourage everyone to find out which side of this issue their local teacher union is on. It's very likely the science side, and this is an example of why tenure has an important function of protecting academic freedom. People pooh-pooh the role of academic freedom in k-12 schools, but it does matter.

We used the issue in one of our interview questions when deciding whom to endorse for the local school board elections. And I live in a pretty conservative area.

Shogo: MAD is from 1998, so it qualifies. There's not enough giant robot in modern games, in my opinion.

I also enjoyed the sarcastic sense of humor in this Monolith game. Other Monolith games include No One Lives Forever, which is fine on its own, and the sequel and spinoff to that game.

Republic Commando is from 2005, so that's still quite recent but I would love to see more star wars games in that vein.