Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sets the record straight on climate change

I couldn't agree more with what Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had to say on climate change. Here's an excerpt:

Let me tell you some of the government agencies who are so-called colluding together. How about NASA? We trust them to send our astronauts into space. We trust them to deliver a rover the size of an S.U.V. to the surface of Mars safely and drive it around, sending data and pictures back from Mars to us. You think these people know what they’re talking about? … How about the United States Navy? The commander in chief of our Pacific Command? Is he colluding when he says that? … If you want to ignore the federal government, if you live in a world in which you think the federal government colludes with itself to make up things that aren’t true, okay. But look at the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry. They’re the people with the biggest bet on this. They have billions of dollars riding on getting it right, and they say climate change is real, carbon pollution is causing it, we’ve got to do something about it. So does the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, because they care about the poor and the effect this will have on the people who have the least. So does every major U.S. scientific society. Every single one. Now the extraordinary part. Here is the proposed resolution:
Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that global climate change is occurring and will continue to pose ongoing risks and challenges to the people and the Government of the United States.
Here is the full resolution.  Despite Whitehouse’s argument, however, the resolution — which required unanimous consent — failed with Inhofe’s objection. So as demonstrated by that non-action, the Senate has no official position on whether climate change is real or not, much less whether it poses a threat to American citizens.
Here is the entire proposed resolution, which failed: [More . . . ]

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Time to discard the Myers-Briggs test

This article at VOX points out numerous problems with the test. Erika Price, a friend of mine who has a Ph.D in psychology (and who has written articles for this website), summed up the criticisms as follows:

-Myers-Briggs is based on an old, fringe, untested hypothesis -The categories do not naturally occur in any sample data -The test itself was formulated by people with no psychometric training or experience - It divides people into categories when really every trait is a spectrum - People are divided into binary categories even though most people are near the middle of the spectrum. -Individuals do not consistently get the same type. (i.e. it is unreliable) - It does not predict behavior -It is not used in mainstream psychological research
The article itself concludes:
It's 2014. Thousands of professional psychologists have evaluated the century-old Myers-Briggs, found it to be inaccurate and arbitrary, and devised better systems for evaluating personality. Let's stop using this outdated measure — which has about as much scientific validity as your astrological sign — and move on to something else.

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How to make college free

Many politicians would claim that college shouldn't be free and that, in fact, the federal government, which is now a direct provider of many college loans, should pile interest onto student loans.   I have two things I'd suggest in response, both of which speak to the systemic corruption of the United States Federal Government:   Warren - college loans     college free Here are more stats from The Atlantic:

A mere $62.6 billion dollars! According to new Department of Education data, that's how much tuition public colleges collected from undergraduates in 2012 across the entire United States. And I'm not being facetious with the word mere, either. The New America Foundation says that the federal government spent a whole $69 billion in 2013 on its hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding. And that doesn't even include loans.

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No time for fun at Kindergarten

This New York Kindergarten cancelled a play because the 5 year olds needed to spend more time preparing for college. If I were an employee of that school, I would never sign that idiotic letter to the parents unless my job security depended on it. Time to reevaluate the values of the school. Time for the administrators to study the importance of play.

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Conversing in a public library

Once a month I teach English as a Second Language at the St. Louis Public Library. I'm assigned a small corner of a big library and I teach English conversational skills to a group of up to eight adults at a time, people from all over the world. During this afternoon's class, a group of talkative men sat 20 feet away from our table. They weren't part of any group, just guys talking with each other. Those men made it somewhat difficult for my students to hear each other, forcing us to be louder than normal. Eventually the Library Security Guard briskly walked up to the table where I was teaching and told my class to stop talking. I told him I was teaching ESL, but he said he didn't care. He told me to quit talking. I showed him the sign designating our space (see the photo - "Conversation Practice") and told him "It is my JOB to converse with these students." He said that if I didn't stop talking he would throw all of us out of the library.

ESL sign

I found the librarian in charge, convincing him that the unauthorized loud talkers nearby should be quiet, so that we could continue with our class. Eventually, the librarian agreed while the security guard sulked. My English conversation lesson for the next 15 minutes was focused on making fun of the ignoramus security guard.

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