Mountebank Blog

"There is nothing so impossible in nature, but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible, but they will affirm."

The Gates

The GatesAfter the snow, I found a chance to take a walk in Central Park to see The Gates. People all over the park (including me) were walking around with big smiles on their faces. One big advantage of this installation is that it’s bringing people (non-New Yorkers and New Yorkers alike) into the park in the wintertime, when it’s very, exceedingly, beautiful. For me, that was a big part of what I enjoyed, just the lovely winter landscape.

landscape with gatesBut the gates really do add something. First (photos don’t really capture this), there are so many of them–but the park is still much, much bigger than they are. That allows long vistas of curving rows of gates, but even more it allows views of the park, long distance, with just a little hint of an orange glow somewhere off in the distance. I liked that–it’s a big park, with so many unexpected vistas, turns around a bend to a surprising nook, or stream, or cliff. That’s part of Olmstead and Vaux’s real genius, to me (and as a Brooklynite, I have to emphasize that it’s just as wonderful in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park).

Buildings and gatesThe other thing that I’ve always loved about Central Park is not just the park…but where it’s placed (location, location, location). It’s a park right smack in the middle of the greatest city in the history of the world, and the views of the buildings surrounding it, the trees counterbalanced by the spires and towers, have always thrilled me. There were many places where the gates somehow echoed those buildings (rectangles echoing rectangles), and in that way they brought the city into the park, and spread the park out into the city, even more than I usually get to see.

In the unlikely event anyone hasn’t seen enough photos of the park this week (I think I counted an average of 2.5 cameras per person when I was walking around), I’ve set up a gallery of my own photos. And if you really want the full (or partial) immersive experience, I’ve posted a large, but low-quality (3 mb) and a small, but higher quality (1 mb) video creation (both are .wmv format).

Free webhosting for teachers

I came across an interesting deal. I can’t vouch for the company myself, but Lunar Pages Hosting looks pretty legit, and they’re making a very generous offer available for teachers. They define teachers as only K-12, so that doesn’t include me, but they’re offering a webhosting package absolutely free for teachers (for educational use). The terms are liberal, the space is reasonably large, and they seem to be committed to doing this for the right reasons. And the price is certainly right! Any K-12 teachers should certainly give them a look.

Chess Supernationals

After a lot of back and forth and logistical confusion, the arrangements are made. I’ll be accompanying my daughter and her chess team when they go to compete in Nashville, Tennessee, at the 2005 US Chess Federation Supernationals. The PS 282 Royals, in only their second year as a team, managed to score a wild-card slot in the NYC Chess in the Schools Grand Prix. That earns them a trip to Nashville. The kids are excited, the parents are proud, and the knights and bishops are ready to fly.

So in the first week in April, I expect I’ll be trying my first attempt at chessblogging.

Lawrence Summers, among others

I’ve been thinking about the Lawrence Summers comments (women and men have different brains, that’s why women are always going to be underrepresented in science and math, this is primarily genetic and biological, not cultural and ideological, etc., etc.), especially in the light of some pieces of the same kind of thinking which Beth came across in an otherwise interesting book (Ralph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design). Then I read another, similar comment, in a defense of Summers by a colleague on the CUNY Senate Forum listserv.

This colleague, like the others, said (I’m paraphrasing), that there may be all kinds of subtle cues, and cultural forces, pushing women out of math and science, and pushing men in, but that “if you really want to do something, no subtle cue will stop you.” And besides, he says, there’s nothing bad about women being different from men in this way (more empathic, less systematizing…less eager to try new things, more eager to model on others…less able to think abstractly, more able to think emotionally). It’s just different, and in fact women are better! Yeah, that’s it! They’re really sweet and nice. Why do they need that nasty old science and math when they’re so nurturing and soft and pretty?

The more I think about this, the more it seems that this colleague, and Koster and Summers and all the others are not just missing, but denying, a very powerful psychological fact. They don’t see just how powerful early experience (very early) is in shaping our development. It’s not that “if you really want something the cues won’t stop you,” it’s more that the very nature of what you really want is shaped by cultural/psychological/ideological forces before you even become self-aware or fully sentient.

These people don’t just want to deny any responsibility to work toward equality in society (although that’s clearly a major motivation for Summers, at least). They want to deny the influence, the impact and power, of early childhood–they want to deny, in a way, basic Freudian psychology. “It’s nothing we can do anything about–nothing to make us think about our own childhood, or our own mothers or fathers. Oh, no, not that. It’s just the structure of the brain.”

In addition, they’re not able (or not interested) to realize that “normal” and “natural” are themselves socially-constructed categories and labels. It’s an old argument, and (sadly) a thoroughly regressive and anti-intellectual one.

All in order

Finally got everything validated, no errors, no warnings, the theme just the way I want it, after the upgrade. This is now (aside from endless fiddling) a WordPress 1.5 blog.

Spam-Karma

In the spirit of unceasing fiddling, I’ve implemented Spam-Karma, in addition to AuthImage, for a try at getting rid of comment spam, and trackback spam, and still keeping the option of having trackbacks turned on. Let’s see how it works. (And while I was at it, I installed a one-click plugin manager, too.)

soc-sec-card

Chuck Schumer has posted an easy-to-use Social Security Calculator to predict how Bush’s Social Security privatization plan will work out for real people, in the real world, beyond the false promises.

For this real person, in this real world, Bush’s wonderful plan will mean a 15% cut in my retirement income. In other words, I’ll lose money, every month, if Bush suceeds. What a great plan.

Upgrade troubles

I upgraded my WordPress installation to 1.5, following the instructions to the letter, but I still (of course) managed to screw something up. Not a disaster, and I’m sure I’ll get it to work, but for right now, it’s impossible to read or write comments. And, the permalinks don’t work, either. 🙁

Darwin Day!

DarwinIt’s Darwin’s birthday (196 years–approaching the bicentennial!), and in honor of the day, a good gesture would be to attend one of the events scheduled as part of the Darwin Day Celebration. Or, failing that, it would be a good time to make a donation to the National Center for Science Education. Or your local public school–to the science program. Or even take a few minutes to read the late Ernst Mayr on Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought.

Live Session Scheduled

InnovateInnovate has scheduled the live session for discussion of my article for Tuesday, 2/22, at noon. It’s right in the middle of the day, but I’m hoping colleagues, friends, anyone interested in online education or asynchronous discussion will be able to steal an hour or two (while eating lunch?) to join the discussion. You’ll be able to type your questions in, and hear me talk, and if you have a usb headset/microphone, you can even talk yourself.

I’ve participated in this kind of session before, through the Sloan-C Online Research Workshop, and other venues. While there’s always an inevitable period of “Can you hear me? No? Can you see the powerpoint slide? Yes?” it’s still kind of fun, and a good way to get some discussion going, at least introducing some concepts, for future thought and investigation.

Of course, the asynchronous option remains open–just click on “discuss” after reading the article.