links for 2008-12-18

"Though few had heard of the freedom-hating extremist before, Barack Hussein Obama quickly garnered attention in several key regions of the country, and saw his popularity buoyed by conservative talk-radio hosts, mass e-mail forwards, and thousands of Americans riding on the backs of flatbed trucks."

"Would you like to know where you will end up in the history profession? I have discovered a formula that can tell you your fortune."

"As the one year anniversary of my official involvement in the Wheel of Time series came and passed last week, I thought it might be interesting to do an update of the original interview I did with Dragonmount last December. Now that I've had a chance to re-read the series and write a good chunk of the last book, have my thoughts changed?"

"But the researchers weren't just interested in imagined faces. What they really wanted to know is if there's a gender bias in recognizing facial expressions. Are we more likely to perceive a male face as angry and a female face as happy? Are we quicker and better at recognizing angry faces in men compared to women? If we are, does this mean we're sexist?"

"To me, this makes Arne Duncan look pretty good. It also exposes some conceptual problems with efforts to narrow the achievement gap. It would have been politically difficult for Duncan to somehow try to implement policies that were designed to prevent white students from improving their performance. Nor does it seems like deliberately thwarting the efforts of the highest-performing groups purely in order to close gaps makes much sense as a policy. "

With a nifty clickable map. Note the inverse relationship between "Rigor of Standards" and "Academic Achievement."

I don't know anything about Arne Duncan's actual views on education, but what you're really thirsting for is some insight into his hoops skills, right?