Phligm Phlagm 2

[philmophlegm]

Vladimir Putin's formative German years

The most decade-specific words in Billboard popular song titles, 1890-2014. (A remarkable illustration of the decline of western civilisation…)

The 10 Most Insane Old School Dungeons & Dragons Rules

Why is America so obsessed with STEM education?

#realisticYA

This is absolutely the sort of ship that the new series of Thunderbirds should feature.

Remember how Rotherham's Labour council allowed the gang rape of 1,400 children by muslims because of political correctness? Would it surprise you to learn that one of those councillors' sons has just been detained in Turkey while trying to join ISIS?

The 2015 Hugo Nominations are out!

Brad Torgersen has done his job well. Kudos. (Predictably, some people are embarrassing themselves on Twitter right now by complaining about this.)

Sir Terry Pratchett never won a Hugo. (Which should tell you all you need to know about how legitimate the award has been in the past.)

Comments

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Wow, the Hugos are going to suck this year.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Jeff Vandermeer didn't get nominated and who's fault is that? It's rhetorical! The answer is SAD PUPPIES.

[andrewducker]

Terry Pratchett never won because most members of the WorldCon tend to be American, and Pratchett was never massive in America.

When you get down to it, the Hugos are just "What things do WorldCon-goers like best." - expecting more of that from them seems a bit odd.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

He did write an outstanding novel with a particularly SF friendly plot in a year where UK voters would have control of the ballot. The novel was Going Postal, it was duly nominated, but he did not accept the nomination for a variety of reasons.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

1E D&D certainly was quirky. Some of its imitators, like the Palladium stuff, was worse.

[ertai.livejournal.com]

I liked several of these articles, but I'm going to have be negative towards the one on STEM education.

I may be biased (I have a Chemistry degree and I work in the field), but I think the American public's understand of science is really terrible. In addition, it seems to be generally considered acceptable to have little scientific understanding. So I think the push for STEM education is good.

Additionally, I think the article presents many false dichotomies and correlations. The article seems to correlate providing a STEM education as removing a student's ability to "learn, think, and write". I was a chemistry major and a political science minor in college and I would say that the science curriculum did NOT require less of any of those, much less "critical thinking".

Additionally, I think its hard to correlate America's education system with America's innovation. Again, working in a STEM field, a large portion of my coworkers are foreign born (and educated). So its hard to correlate education with achievement when the achievement is done with the top talent from other countries.

And in general, I think the dichotomy of math/science and literature/arts is false but very popular. People can be multifaceted with varied interests. Also, math and science have many similarities with philosophy and logic. Creating proofs is basic logic using mathematical terms. Scientific theories and hypotheses are often applied philosophy, let alone theoretical science.

Sorry for the long commentary, but I think this is an example of how science is largely misunderstood in America since I don't think the author's criticism is well placed. I don't know if he knows what a STEM education consists of. It seems like his idea of one is multiplication tables and flash cards.