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"No one wants a more rapid transition to better math instruction and student skills than I and others..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:17:37 -0800

“

No one wants a more rapid transition to better math instruction and student skills than I and others at the UW. We see firsthand the impact of poor math skills and preparation. But it is absolutely unfair to threaten and deny graduation to our high school seniors when we have provided them with an inferior math education.

The math standards have just recently been changed..they are improved but really not good enough. Many of our districts are using terrible textbooks—long on talk and short on real math. Seattle has extraordinarily poor “discovery” math books at all three levels, and major districts like Issaquah are determined to use books found to be unsound by state mathematicians. Many teachers, and particularly elementary school teachers, don’t have sufficient math backgrounds. Fixing these problems and changing the attitudes in our problematic Ed schools will take time.

”

- Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Sawickipedia: Cliff Mass is one of the leading meteorology professors in the nation and thus gets math. Though I disagree with him about a standard exam to gauge student progress/abilities, his indictment of Seattle and one of its suburbs (Issaquah) is damning. Seattle - please wake up. You’re indulgent passive/aggressive let’s all get along culture is hurting even your best and brightest students. You can’t get along with Math - it just is. There are right and wrong answers. And yes if you get it wrong, you’re wrong. Please fix your math curriculum before you harm any more students.

Google to buy mobile ad network for $750 million - Yahoo! Finance

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:06:48 -0800

Google to buy mobile ad network for $750 million - Yahoo! Finance:

rafer:

Rafer sez:
I frequently post about ‘1st-time founders should go get a little rich and then decide if they want to go big. The odds of success suck to badly otherwise.’ None of that’s going to change, but Omar, AdMob’s founder, clearly made himself one of the exceptions. Looking back over the past 5 to 10 years, just what fraction of the exceptions were Sequoia-funded? 25%? 30%? Wow.

Yeah a bunch were Sequoia deals but how many were practically inside deals (ie. Sequoia selling to previous Sequoia companies)? This price is hard to imagine given any traditional valuation metric except Sequoia engineering a deal amongst friends. Long live the Sequoia-mafia as the might say.

"I don’t think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:31:04 -0800

“

I don’t think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don’t think they realize how much it matters that it’s broken.

The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they’ve ever done. Their reputation with programmers used to be great. It used to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. The App Store has changed that. Now a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil.

”

- Apple’s Mistake

Sawickipedia: Great post by Mr. Graham and gets at the heart of developer relations and the mess Apple has made for itself. Apple has never been great at developer relations. And given that fact, developers should not be surprised now that Apple isn’t great at developer relations. It speaks a lesson that @rafer and I learned hard at Lookery, be extremely knowledgeable about the host you are reliant on and hedge your bets. At Lookery, it cost us our business in the end and hopefully app devs for the iPhone won’t make the same mistake we did.

"The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:20:51 -0800

“

The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only a tiny dot on the big world map, and it has to be extrapolated to the entire region with the help of supercomputers. Besides, there are still many blind spots, the largest being the Arctic, where there are only about 20 measuring stations to cover a vast area. Climatologists refer to the problem as the “Arctic hole.”

The scientists at the Hadley Center simply used the global average value for the hole, ignoring the fact that it has become significantly warmer in the Arctic, says Rahmstorf. But a NASA team from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which does make the kinds of adjustments for the Arctic data that Rahmstorf believes are necessary, arrives at a flat temperature curve for the last five years that is similar to that of their British colleagues.

”

- Stagnating Temperatures: Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Sawickipedia: I’ve been a global warming questioner based on my experience as a econ major having developed and reviewed a number of complex and large computational models. The reality, in my view, is almost all models of such dynamic and complex systems are wrong - the detail is too complex for today’s computing and human levels of capabilities.

And reading that scientific community is basing their models on just 517 data points for temperature is astounding when as a globe we likely need tens of thousands to have any “accurate” model just reinforces my view that any cries of scientific certainty are hyperbolistic overstatement. Yes, the globe could be in trouble but the reality is we don’t really know for sure and even if we did no way in hell do we understand what’s really driving it.

At this point it’s more religion then science.

"That the Emerald City is home to one of the country’s foremost weather academics is very..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:43:47 -0800

“

That the Emerald City is home to one of the country’s foremost weather academics is very Seattle. Yet stylistically, the Long Island–reared Mass is anything but. A passionate “math activist” who would like to return to the days of calculator-free “explicit instruction” in elementary, middle, and secondary schools, Mass and a pair of co-plaintiffs currently have a lawsuit pending against Seattle Public Schools, in which they claim the District’s shift to a “Discovery Math” curriculum has widened the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students. (A January court date has been set.)

“Instead of getting the answer right, it’s far more important to write an essay about your thought process,” says Mass of an instructional movement he claims has led to a severe deterioration of math skills among his collegiate students. “I’ve had students in my office crying because they’ve had to give up their dream of becoming meteorologists. They couldn’t pass the math. The most demanding aspects of my field are being dominated by people overseas.”

”

- Seattle Weekly: Critical Mass - a Profile of Cliff Mass

Sawickipedia: Seattle Public Schools and it’s Fuzzy Math curriculum is such a gross disservice to the Seattle community I pray Cliff’s lawsuit passes.

"Not surprisingly, they often get asked to code for equity instead of cash. Todd (Sampson)..."

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:06:52 -0800

“

Not surprisingly, they often get asked to code for equity instead of cash. Todd (Sampson) particularly wants to say yes but our group knows that doing so too easily leads to three scenarios:

- Bad: owning a pile of worthless stock in early stage deals that never happened.

- Worse: owning early stage stock in a phenomenal startup but not making any money because all the returns are derived from pro rata participation in later rounds.

- Terrible: making money solely via later pro rata participation as described in Worse, and therefore being an accomplice in crushing the Common, knocking down the Series A, and firing the Founder.

”

- Lifestyle Capital

Sawickipedia: Can’t wait to see how this develops for @toddsampson and @rafer & team.

"The nation is set to begin an ambitious program, backed by $19 billion in government incentives, to..."

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:37:47 -0800

“

The nation is set to begin an ambitious program, backed by $19 billion in government incentives, to accelerate the adoption of computerized patient records in doctors’ offices and hospitals, replacing ink and paper. There is wide agreement that the conversion will bring better care and lower costs, saving the American health care system up to $100 billion a year by some estimates.

But a new study comparing 3,000 hospitals at various stages in the adoption of computerized health records has found little difference in the cost and quality of care. “The way electronic medical records are used now has not yet had a real impact on the quality or cost of health care,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the research project.

”

- Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records - NYTimes.com

Sawickipedia: So one of the major initiatives to save health care costs doesn’t save any money. I will not all be surprised if ObamaCare will be to Obama and the Dem’s what the Iraq War was to Bush and the Repub’s: an ideological crusade whose benefits will or were speculative at best and grossly negligent in review.

"The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric..."

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:21:53 -0800

“

The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more “choice” and “competition”) to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn’t? From 1970 to 2007, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose 9.2 percent annually compared to the 10.4 percent of private insurers — and the small difference partly reflects cost shifting. Congress periodically improves Medicare benefits, and there’s a limit to how much squeezing reimbursement rates can check costs. Doctors and hospitals already complain that low payments limit services or discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients.

Even [Yale Political Scientist and Public Plan idea creator Jacob] Hacker concedes that without reimbursement rates close to Medicare’s, the public plan would founder. If it had to “negotiate rates directly with providers” — do what private insurers do — the public plan could have “a very hard time” making inroads, he writes. Hacker opposes such weakened versions of the public plan.

By contrast, a favored public plan would probably doom today’s private insurance. Although some congressional proposals limit enrollment eligibility in the public plan, pressures to liberalize would be overwhelming. Why should some under-65 Americans enjoy lower premiums and others not? In one study that assumed widespread eligibility, the Lewin Group estimated that 103 million people — half the number with private insurance — would switch to the public plan. Private insurance might become a specialty product.

Many would say: Whoopee! Get rid of the sinister insurers. Bring on a government single-payer system. But if that’s the agenda, why not debate it directly? It’s not insurers that cause high health costs; they’re simply the middlemen. It’s the fragmented delivery system and open-ended reimbursement. Would strict regulation of doctors, hospitals and patients under a single-payer system provide control? Or would genuine competition among health plans over price and quality work better?

That’s the debate we need, but in truth, doctors, hospitals and patients don’t want to be limited, whether by government or markets. Congress reflects public opinion. Fearing a real debate, we fake it.

”

- RealClearPolitics - The ‘Public Plan’ Delusion

"“Along the way, here we are a 14-year-old Internet company that somehow got boring,” said Bartz, who..."

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:35:39 -0700

“

“Along the way, here we are a 14-year-old Internet company that somehow got boring,” said Bartz, who said the company’s 6 percent operating margins were “pathetic” and “unacceptable.”

“Today is the beginning of a journey back to respect,” Bartz said.

Yahoo executives said the company would invest in editorial staff to produce more original features and tweak its online products to keep users on the site longer and boost advertising revenue.

”

- Yahoo begins journey back to respect

Rafer sez:

Am I to interpret that Y! expects they can raise operating margins by adding more human editorial?

(via rafer)

That is exactly what I thought when reading that. Didn’t former CEO Terry Semel prove that Yahoo The Media Company was a bad idea?

(via caterpillarcowboy)

Sawickipedia: You both are missing the fact that the last refuge of high cpm’s is in branded content or high value original content. I agree the margins aren’t there but when you’ve got a salesperson’s mentality the focus isn’t on margin - it’s on high rate revenue.

How I Learned to Appreciate Dance Being Married to a Ballerina -...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:33:04 -0700

How I Learned to Appreciate Dance Being Married to a Ballerina - Todd Sawicki (via ignitenight)

Sawickipedia: Now seeing this I actually think I did the topic a little justice - now I need to actually let my dancing wife see it. She’ll be the real judge.

"Of course you want to set up a system where an institution dreads the day it happens because..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:20:55 -0700

““Of course you want to set up a system where an institution dreads the day it happens because management gets whacked, shareholders get whacked and the board gets whacked,” said Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association. “But you don’t want to create a system that raises great uncertainty and changes what institutions, risk management executives and lawyers are used to.””

- Trying to Rein In ‘Too Big to Fail’ Institutions - NYTimes.com

Sawickipedia: Too f’in bad. A system that creates uncertainty for the very institutions and parasites that feed off them that nearly f’ed every western citizen as a result of your careless and excessively risky self-serving, bonus chasing, master of the universe? Too f’in bad. Yeah it’s going to suck to actually have to live within the bounds of reason.

"how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:16:36 -0700

“

how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them when they get in trouble.

A senior administration official said on Sunday that after extensive consultations with Treasury Department officials, Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would introduce legislation as early as this week. The measure would make it easier for the government to seize control of troubled financial institutions, throw out management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by the institution.

The official said the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, was planning to endorse the changes in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday.

The White House plan as outlined so far would already make it much more costly to be a large financial company whose failure would put the financial system and the economy at risk. It would force such institutions to hold more money in reserve and make it harder for them to borrow too heavily against their assets.

Setting up the equivalent of living wills for corporations, that plan would require that they come up with their own procedure to be disentangled in the event of a crisis, a plan that administration officials say ought to be made public in advance.

”

- Trying to Rein In ‘Too Big to Fail’ Institutions - NYTimes.com

Sawickipedia: Thank goodness - I have no idea whether this proposal actually will work - but it’s about time that the current administration finally started realizing that too big to fail is and was one of the things that got us into this mess. Given the crony capitalism inherent in too big to fail I give this no shot of going anywhere if Congress has a say.

"In an effort to push consumers toward buying more movies, some major film studios are considering a..."

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:47:02 -0700

“In an effort to push consumers toward buying more movies, some major film studios are considering a new policy that would block DVDs from being offered for rental until several weeks after going on sale. Under the plan, new DVD releases would be available on a purchase-only basis for a few weeks, after which time companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix would be allowed to rent the DVDs to their customers. The move comes as the studios are grappling with sharply declining DVD revenue, which has long propped up the movie business.”

- Business & Technology | DVD rental delay considered by Hollywood studios | Seattle Times Newspaper

Sawickipedia: This is literally one of the dumbest things i have ever heard w/r/t the media business. I guarantee this will not lead to more sales. I also guarantee it will lead to more pirating.

Dumb.

"We must not get diverted by the financial sector’s opposition or by populist rage. We must focus,..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:52 -0700

“We must not get diverted by the financial sector’s opposition or by populist rage. We must focus, instead, on the core issue. Trying to make financial systems safer has made them more perilous. Today, as a result, neither market discipline nor regulation is effective. There is a danger, therefore, that this rescue will lead to still greater risk-taking and an even worse crisis at some point in the not too distant future. Either we impose a credible threat of bankruptcy, or institutions we have to support are made safer, or, better, we have both of these. Open-ended insurance of weakly regulated institutions that take complex gambles is intolerable. We dare not return to business as usual. It is as simple – and brutal – as that.”

- FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - How to manage the gigantic financial cuckoo in our nest

Sawickipedia: Martin Wolf is one of the best financial commentators on the planet. Everyone interested in finance and economics should read his columns. To his point - the threat of bankruptcy - the threat of failure must be real as failure is a very powerful organizational and personal motivator. That’s where socialism and crony capitalism fail - they remove the risk of failing which either allows you to make insane risks because you aren’t worried about not being bailed out or you become so insular because success is “guaranteed” sort of like social promotion in schools. Bankruptcy is good. Creative Destruction is good. Failure is ok.
(via sawickipedia)

Rafer sez:
This is a restatement of Too Big to Fail/Survive, with an attempt to swap cause and effect of anti-scaling regulation/bailouts. His restatement is unfortunately just another diversion.

(via rafer)

Sawickipedia: @Rafer you have it backwards Wolf is extolling against too big to fail. His point, and my agreement, is that all businesses need to face the realities of bankruptcy - big, small and otherwise. It was the unstated expectation of bailouts that helped caused the mess we’re in. Wolf is far, far from being in the too big to fail camp.

"Say what you like about healthcare reform—say that it is necessary, or it is unnecessary; say that..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:44:47 -0700

“

Say what you like about healthcare reform—say that it is necessary, or it is unnecessary; say that it is just another government program bound to fail, or that it is an important government duty to pick up where the private sector has failed; say that it is a manufactured crisis or that it is the most serious political issue of our time—but you can’t say this bill is rational, well-considered, and logical.

It is political, it is pay-for-play, and it is not reform. Indeed, it is Chicago politics at the National level. How did our most populist modern President since Jimmy Carter come to allow such a state of affairs? Well, apparently, everything—even principle—is negotiable.

Still, we leave the political name-calling for others who care about such stuff. Our business is to make money.

And unless something goes terribly wrong in subsequent legislative maneuvering, we think so-called “healthcare reform” provides the best opportunity for profitable investment in Big Pharma in decades.

The “Audacity of Hope”? Not that we can see. More like, the Audacity of Extortion.

”

- Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up: The Audacity of Extortion

"We must not get diverted by the financial sector’s opposition or by populist rage. We must focus,..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:35:13 -0700

"YOUR PET’S MARK The eco-footprints of the family pet each year as calculated by the Vales:..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:27:21 -0700

“

YOUR PET’S MARK The eco-footprints of the family pet each year as calculated by the Vales:

German shepherds: 1.1 hectares, compared with 0.41ha for a large SUV.

Cats: 0.15ha (slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf).

Hamsters: 0.014ha (two of them equate to a medium-sized plasma TV).

Goldfish: 0.00034ha (an eco-finprint equal to two cellphones).

”

- Save the planet: eat a dog? | Stuff.co.nz

Sawickipedia: Cats beat Dogs once again

Cocoa Sawicki - now since passed - but one cool cat when he was still here

"The point of the chapter in SuperFreakonomics is that geoengineering might be good insurance in case..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:13:17 -0700

“The point of the chapter in SuperFreakonomics is that geoengineering might be good insurance in case we don’t get global warming under control. Nobody can tell you today exactly how much CO2 we can emit without causing grave environmental harm. Nobody can tell you at what point the world will find the political will, the money, and the technological innovation to solve the problem. In a situation like that, can the world afford to turn its back on what could be a promising approach should we fail with our other efforts?”

- Are Solar Panels Really Black? And What Does That Have to Do With the Climate Debate? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

Sawickipedia: Myhrvold captures my view on the debate on what to do about climate change - we just don’t know what’s going to happen and what if anything we can do about it. That being said - I am a huge believer in decentralized power production (home solar) and renewable just from a practical long-term economic perspective (there’s only so much oil in the ground).

Selling a transition to renewable on part-luddite, part-religious creeds is a good way to lose the vast middle ground of the american public.

"The renowned Mayo Clinic is no longer accepting some Medicare and Medicaid patients, raising new..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:25:47 -0700

“The renowned Mayo Clinic is no longer accepting some Medicare and Medicaid patients, raising new questions about whether it is too selective to serve as a model for health-care reform. The White House has repeatedly held up for praise Mayo and other medical centers, many of which are in the Upper Midwest, that perform well in Dartmouth College rankings showing wide disparities in how much hospitals spend on Medicare patients.”

- Mayo Clinic Criticized for Limiting Medicare Patients - washingtonpost.com

Sawickipedia: The current pub/private insurance system is broken and the proposed “reforms” only double down on the current broken system. Why isn’t the loyal opposition not touting plans like this from this Atlantic article? Sigh. http://bit.ly/ZBOUf

"The White House tapping FOX News on the proverbial shoulder and asking them to “step outside” is..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:21:25 -0700

“The White House tapping FOX News on the proverbial shoulder and asking them to “step outside” is more about shaming all the other news outlets who from this point forward proceed to regurgitate their horseshit smears as if it were legitimate news. It’s an extremely smart tactic. I can totally imagine, after 6 more months of saying that FOX “isn’t really a news network”, some White House official sarcastically prefacing their answer to someone at CNN with, “Wow, that’s a FOX News question..” Its a great way of marginalizing FOX while rhetorically wrapping legitimate news organizations on the wrists for clumsily reporting smears. This is a brilliant strategy, please keep it up.”

- The Humanity Critic, Why the White House is Smart to Take on Fox (via soupsoup) (via noahkai) (via ericmortensen) (via tedr)

Sawickipedia: It’s an idiotic strategy. Do NBC/MSNBC reporters still get access despite shills like Maddow, Olbermann and Matthews? Of course they do. The British press is way more partisan then Fox and somehow PM’s and the Parliament manage just fine. Grow some skin.

Oh and by the way - Fox’s ratings went up as a result of this silly street fight. Rise above, Rise above.