Links 12/27/10

By mikethemadbiologist on December 27, 2010.

Links for you. Science:

Ancient humans, dubbed 'Denisovans', interbred with us
Hub care sites see rise in stomach bug cases
African elephant is two species, researchers say

Other:

What Haley Barbour's amnesia tells us: Like any good Southern conservative of his generation, he ignores the entire bad faith stew in which he was raised (a must-read post)
Really, Teacher. I Read the Assignment. The Marvel Comics Version.
When You Hit Bottom, Stop Digging. (Regarding this link and the previous one, I've dealt with value-added teaching appraisal and lifetime income issues elsewhere)
Police State: "Lefty" San Francisco Can Throw People in Jail For Sitting on a Sidewalk (this article misses the point: cops have always been able to do this, one way or another; what's so gruesome is that this is what passes for policy to 'help' the indigent, even as the hardest hit areas by homelessness don't support these policies)
Ministers and Federal Subsidies

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Links 1/28/11

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More Evidence of How Value-Added Testing Fails at Teacher Evaluation

Last week, E.D. Kain took Megan McArdle to task for promoting the use of student testing as a means to evaluate teachers. This, to me, was the key point: ....nobody is arguing against tests as a way to measure outcomes. Anti-standardized-tests advocates are arguing against the way tests are being…

Links 8/28/10

Sunny. Warm. Links. Science: Brief data analysis interlude Wave of Rhabdomyolysis in Oregon High School Football Players Darwin wrong--again?? Dude, where are my copy number variants? Other: PAC-Man Ate My Ballot An Infrastructure Perfect Storm: New York Trains Shut Down En Masse Managing The LA…

Teacher Evaluation and Test Scores, aleph-nought in a series

There's been a lot of energy expended blogging and writing about the LA Times's investigation of teacher performance in Los Angeles, using "Value Added Modeling," which basically looks at how much a student's scores improved during a year with a given teacher. Slate rounds up a lot of reactions, in…

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