Links for 2011-07-11

"Don't tell teachers, "whatever it takes," and then act surprised when they follow that advice to its logical extreme.  Don't tell the principal, "you'll lose your job and we'll shut down the school if it doesn't make AYP," and then act surprised when the leadership finds ways to cheat.

When politicians set ultimatums like job security, institutional safety and student retention on kill-and-drill tests, cheating will occur.  True, the teachers in Atlanta were unethical.  In many cases, their students would have performed well on the tests if the teachers had ignored the pizza parties and pies in the face and simply taught with critical thinking and creativity.  However, a constructivist approach feels very risky when job security is on the line and the entire school culture is pushing teach-to-the-test packets."

"I hope to get back to talking about experiments soon, but for now I wanted to write up a quick problem I thought up a while back.  The question is this: how long does a molecule of H2O on earth remain in the liquid state, on average?"

"I could have ripped up these counterfeit boarding passes in the privacy of a toilet stall, but I chose not to, partly because this was the renowned Senator Larry Craig Memorial Wide-Stance Bathroom, and since the commencement of the Global War on Terror this particular bathroom has been patrolled by security officials trying to protect it from gay sex, and partly because I wanted to see whether my fellow passengers would report me to the TSA for acting suspiciously in a public bathroom. No one did, thus thwarting, yet again, my plans to get arrested, or at least be the recipient of a thorough sweating by the FBI, for dubious behavior in a large American airport. Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show--security theater is the term of art--I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness. "

"We ran background checks on six Gizmodo employees, including our editor in chief Joe Brown, and all but one came back clean. When it doesn't find anything incriminating on a potential employee, it simply issues a notice that the employees passed (see below) and doesn't generate a file.

And then there's me. I flunked hard. When that happens, Social Intelligence creates a report, which it would then send to an employer. And if you don't get a job because of your social media report, you can request a copy. Mine's filled with delightful details, like "subject admits to use of cocaine as well as LSD," and "subject references use of Ketamine."

Basically, I may never work again.

Yet the report is fascinating to look at. So privacy be damned, we've posted the entire thing online, you can read it at the bottom of this post. We've also annotated it and called out some interesting highlights in the gallery on this page."