From the Mailbag

I lost so much time proving to myself that our Dell laptop suffered a hard disk crash last night that I didn't get to as much of my email as I usually do this morning. As it turns out, there was so much good stuff there that when I did get to it at lunch, I realized that I could piece together a very nice roundup in very short order.

An Inconvenient Truth ...

... about math instruction. A friend who teaches math tipped me off to this one.

I've seen only the first few minutes of this so far, but ... I think you can trust me on this one. (HT: Michael Gold)

Update: Actually, the examples here and the criticism leveled against elementary math instruction are both even worse than I imagined possible. Ms. McDermott ends by noting such qualities (in the context of mathematics) of today's high school graduates as "inability to work alone", "heavy reliance on calculators", and "inability to think logically". So: Don't trust me. Watch it post haste and tell everyone you can about this.

Paper "Sculpture"

I am not sure this would qualify as origami, but it is still amazing what one pair of creative hands can make from one sheet of paper!


Follow the link for lots more. (HT: Adrian Hester)

Undiluted Marxism

Bill Spears emailed me a link to an entire blog -- by the author of Dissecting Leftism -- devoted to giving the public easy access to some of the more vicious quotations from Karl Marx and his early followers.

"Dictatorship is rule based directly on force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained through the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws." - V. I. Lenin (Stephan Courtois, "Conclusion," in The Black Book of Communism, ed. Stephane Courtois [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999], p741)

I appreciate the fact that he lists the source of each quotation.

Two Bloggers at "Capitalist Paradise" Site

The Inspector writes me to the effect that he has resumed blogging, but now calls his blog Night Watchman rather than Intellectual Watchman, and has recommended another blog there, Kriegsgefahrzustand: "He's a man of fewer words, but oh boy is he on the ball in terms of the latest news."

So stop by there and smell the fresh air. From the looks of his new banner, it would seem that in addition to changing his blog's name, the Inspector has passed a clean air ordinance! (Couldn't resist that one!)

In the future, look for both blogs in the sidebar.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added comment to math video.