Like many geeks (or at least wannabe geeks!!) I often visit Slashdot, the home of "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters." It is a discussion forum where stories are linked and discussed. So many people frequent Slashdot, that if you get a link on their front page, expect a server meltdown, called being "slashdotted". It's analogous to being "instalaunched". Most of /. (as known to the readers) will be of no use to the majority of people who simply send email and surf the web, or want their computers to "just work". In that case, I emphatically encourage you to purchase a Mac. And, by the way, Macs are also the choice of geeks everywhere.

Two articles from the last two days are a treasure trove of information. Though they relate to programming and the workforce in general, they are applicable to what I want to focus on, education.

Joel Splotsky, a former Microsoft programmer, wrote an article on his website called Hitting the high notes. Programmer and author Paul Graham wrote an article today on his website called What businesses can learn from Open Source.

Joel Splotsky writes:

If the only difference between programmers were productivity, you might think that you could substitute five mediocre programmers for one really good programmer. That obviously doesn't work. Brooks' Law, "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later," is why. A single good programmer working on a single task has no coordination or communication overhead. Five programmers working on the same task must coordinate and communicate. That takes a lot of time. There are added benefits to using the smallest team possible; the man-month really is mythical.

But wait, there's even more!

The real trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long they work, they never produce something as good as what the great programmers can produce.

Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years.

Five Jim Davis's -- creator of that unfunny cartoon cat, where 20% of the jokes are about how Monday sucks and the rest are about how much the cat likes lasagna (and those are the punchlines!) ... five Jim Davis's could spend the rest of their lives writing comedy and never, ever produce the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.

The Creative Zen team could spend years refining their ugly iPod knockoffs and never produce as beautiful, satisfying, and elegant a player as the Apple iPod. And they're not going to make a dent in Apple's market share because the magical design talent is just not there. They don't have it.

The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time. The number of divas who can hit the f6 in Mozart's Queen of the Night is vanishingly small, and you just can't perform The Queen of the Night without that famous f6.

Paul Graham writes:

Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, because they enjoy it. Like open source hackers, bloggers compete with people working for money, and often win. The method of ensuring quality is also the same: Darwinian. Companies ensure quality through rules to prevent employees from screwing up. But you don't need that when the audience can communicate with one another. People just produce whatever they want; the good stuff spreads, and the bad gets ignored. And in both cases, feedback from the audience improves the best work.

Another thing blogging and open source have in common is the Web. People have always been willing to do great work for free, but before the Web it was harder to reach an audience or collaborate on projects.

I think the most important of the new principles business has to learn is that people work a lot harder on stuff they like. Well, that's news to no one. So how can I claim business has to learn it? When I say business doesn't know this, I mean the structure of business doesn't reflect it.

Read both articles in their entirety to under the full context, but let's address another issue of which I'm rather familiar with: teaching.

I have written in the past, as have many others, about the poor quality of history education today. David Gerlernter has lamented this. Professor Sam Wineburg is concerned how so many history teachers haven't taken any history classes. Hillsdale professor Burt Folsom decries the poor quality and blatant rewriting of our history texts.

Some time ago, I wrote about a flap that arose when a principal in Northern California banned a teacher from handing out the Declaration of Independence to his fifth grade class. I offered a defense of sorts:

What I offer here is a defense of the principal. Anyone reading my blog the past year will have have no doubt where I stand on the issue, and it is most definitely not with the principal. However, her defense is simple: ignorance.

A few months ago, I commented on a column by George Will about a bill in Arizona to increase education funding. I argued that improve education, "money is the smallest part". Referencing the two articles I mentioned earlier, if we want to improve education, then hire people who have a degree in the discipline they teach.

Too often, in fact, in most cases, a teacher goes into an interview for a job and has a credential that "qualiifes" them to teach the subject they are applying for. In my case, I have a single subject social studies credential. This "qualifies" me to teach history, economics, government, as well as any other course that falls under "social studies", including psychology. But how hard is it to earn a social studies credential? In truth, not very. And as professor Wineburg noted, to often those who teach history have taken few if any classes in it.

(For the record, I have a Bachelor's in Economics, which I will be teaching this year. Though I don't have a minor in history, I do have over 24 units and have an entire library of history books that I have read.)

During the interview, a variety of questions will be asked of the candidate ranging from teaching philosophy, discipline, parents, extra curricular activities, etc. Yet few if any questions will ever deal directly with what the candidate knows or feels about the subject they're being hired to teach. And to paraprase Joel Splotsky, someone who has a mediocre understanding of their subject will never be able to hit the "high notes" of their discipline. In other words, someone who has a cursory knowledge of the past will never be able to teach the depth and richness of history.

One of the latest fads, if you will, regrading teaching history has been to replace knowledge with activity. In other words, it's not any more what is taught, but how it's taught. A rigorous reading and writing curriculum, based on facts and ideas has been supplanted with feelings and constructed knowledge. Now, it is more important to uderstand what it was like to live in the industrial revolution rather than understanding the effects it had on transforming Europe into a militray juggernaut. Students are given less information and asked to create more with it: what is felt supercedes what is known, what one thinks is far more important than what one understands.

But one can't fault the student when the teacher knows little more than what's in the textbook.

We find out today that Education advocates are accusing a state commission of mislabeling teachers' credentials to meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires that all core classes, such as English, math and science, must be taught by teachers with the "highly qualified" classification by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.

There are many paths to "highly qualified", yet the only one that should matter is a degree. One with a degree in the subject they teach will presumably have a better understanding and greater love of the subject than someone who managed to pass a test.

Far more emphasis should be placed on what teachers know and understand about their subject. Whether one is programming a computer or teaching history, they will do it far better if they are doing what they love.

I wrote a few days ago in Snatching defeat that we are at the beginning of great and sweeping changes in the middle east. Yet, at home the defeatists and fifth columnists are doing their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This begs the question, what does a victory look like?

The president got into a little bit of trouble before the election when he expressed doubt we could "win" the war. Careful restatement along with a public who generally understood what he meant limited the damage, yet he had an interesting point.

We aren't going to have a surrender ceremony on the Missouri, and we are going to have generals meet at Appomatox. So when will we know it's over, and how will we know we've won?

Some time ago, I wrote the nearest comparison to Iraq was our own post-Civil War South.

People forget that when Lee surrended at Appomatox, there were still large numbers of Southern forces under disparate command. In particular, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who would later become founder of the KKK had several thousand soldiers in his army. There were battles still raging, and while Lee surrendered, many others didn't, or wouldn't. Even though Lee refused to order a guerilla campaign, thus saving his historical place, many others simply refused to give up the fight.

Though there weren't the foreign fighters in the South that there are in Iraq, there are several parallels.

The Southern economy was in shambles and its infrastructure a disaster. Large numbers of Southern soldiers returned to find they had lost everything. Many Southerners viewed the Northerners as occupiers. The Southern army had been disbanded, her troops sent home.

According to the Army's official history:

With the ending of Congressional reconstruction, the Army's direct supervision of civil affairs in the South came to an end and the number of troops on occupation duty, which already had fallen off markedly, was reduced still further. Now its mission was to preserve the new state governments by continuing its protection of the Negroes and their white allies upon whom the governments rested, policing elections, helping to apprehend criminals, and keeping the peace in conflicts between rival state officials. The Ku Klux Klan, a postwar organization that had a considerable membership by 1870-71, became an object of special concern to the Army, as it did to the Congress, because of the Klan's terroristic efforts to deliver the South from Negro-Radical Republican control. Consequently, one of the most important Army functions in this period was support of federal marshals in an effort to suppress the Klan. This became an Army responsibility despite the restoration of state militia forces under the reconstruction governments as a means of relieving some of the burden on the Regular troops, which were spread thin. Since many of these new militia forces consisted of Negroes, they were not very effective against white terrorists, who directed some of their acts against the militiamen themselves. These militia forces mainly performed general police duty and watched over elections and voting. Eventually, because of the opposition of white southerners to Negroes in uniform, the Negro militia forces were disbanded.

As I conlcuded:

One of the goals of Reconstruction was to create a "New South". Sound familiar?

Important to remember is that white resistance led to the eventual removal of forces in 1876 by President Hayes, and wide spread disenfrachisement and racial segregation took place in the form of the "Black codes". Lynchings, burning churches, and other acts of violence were commonplace. The Klan was a widely dispersed organization that the government had great difficulty in controlling. The local governments had little control, as they were the preceived creations of Negroes and Readical Republicans.

There is an historical precedence to the current Iraqi situaiton. We have already done this before, it is going to take a long time, and it is going to be difficult. If we cut and run as Kerry would have us do, we'll end up with a lingering problem, one that lasts for generations.

It doesn't take many people to derail a transition to an open, democratic society. In fact, time is always on their side. Just as the white resistance and conservative Democrats wore down the Northern occupation, so too will we get worn down unless we finish the job, and soon.

As the local governments had little authority during Reconstruction, we can't afford to repeat that mistake. We must make them the real instruments of power in Iraq and show them independent of US interests.

Mostly, there were some states that chose to move on, while others resisted. We treated the South as an entire body where we should have dealt with states on a one-by-one basis. So too should we deal with the Sunni traingle and Fallujah, independent from the rest of Iraq. Where those regions wish to move on, let them. Don't let a small number of people destroy the progress of most of Iraq.

A victory in Iraq and throughout the entire Muslim world will look like our victory here in America. It will mirror the rise and fall of the Klan.

At one time, the Klan would hold large rallies in Washington DC, thousands would participate, many thousands more would attend. They were a mainstream political force, mostly in the south, but there was plenty of sympathy in the North.

"Birth of a Nation", a virulently racists film was shown in the White House, and it's "veracity" was confirmed by the president, Woodrow Wilson.

In the 1920's, eugenics, the pseudo-science of racial supremacy and perfection, was almost as popular here as in central Europe. In fact, it was the basis for the ABCL (American Birth Control League) and Planned Parenthood, groups whose stated mission was the ultimate eradication of blacks from American society.

Our history of failure to protect civil rights is a sad part of our past. On that, there can be no argument. However, in less than a century, the Klan, and the rest of their simpaticos have become absolutely marginalized and devoid of any political power and influence.

Millions of GI's went overseas and saw black soldiers fight, suffer, bleed, and die. Successes like the Tuskeegee Airmen could not be kept hidden. Without the dedication of the black drivers of the Red Ball Express, our troops would never have had the supplies necessary to defeat Nazi Germany.

And it was becoming obvious to millions the incompatibility of those willing to fight and die to defeat an apartheid society returning to one far less extreme, but still very discriminatory. The incongruity of that caused Truman to integrate the armed forces, Eisenhower to support the integration of a high school in Little Rock, and congressmen and senators from both parties to vote for what was right, not politically expedient.

This despite the determined efforts of some, one who is still serving in the senate.

Yet no law, federal mandate, or government program had the effect of society changing on its own. Thought the Klan was never criminalized, membership, once a badge of honor came to be seen as a stigma. A disgusting and vile ideology, hidden under the banner of patriotism, was exposed for what it was.

The public turned against the Klan, totally and completely. It was not easy, nor was it peaceful. Yet it has been one of the great successes and accomplishments of America. It is also unique to free societies as well, that freedom becomes a religion almost in and of itself, and its spread and growth greeted with almost missionary zeal.

What else would have compelled thousands and thousands in the north to go on freedom rides, voter drives, and risk life and limb for those they knew not? Our country underwent a tremendous upheaval, yet in the end, we emerged far stronger and wealthier.

Sadly though, there will still be an act of violence based on hate. It is impossible to prevent all such atrocities. However, don't denigrate the magnificent in spite of the perfect. Those who do, do so for pure political and personal gain. They should be shunned equally.

And so this too must be the ultimate outcome in the Muslim world. Already, moderate voices are being heard, their credibility steadily growing. Final victory will only happen when the extremist, the jihadist, has no admirers and no supporters. When he is viewed in his community the same as the Klansman is viewed in America we will achieved victory.

It is a victory which we cannot achieve on our own. Arabs and Muslims must themselves take the stand against the radical cleric, issue the fatwas without qualifiers, and shun any and all who would succumb to such hate.

It will occur when the environment for creating such people is destroyed. As such, only in free and democratic societies can that occur. Only where the love of liberty, the appreciation of freedom and self-determination strong, where people can work and make their lives better will that condition reach fruition.

I truly believe it can, and sadly I know that it must, happen. We learned too well a few years ago that it won't be the strong state, but rather, the failed, the backward, the oppressive state that is our greatest threat. We defeated Soviet communism as much as because at its core, it wasn't a state, nor a people, that sought armageddon.

It won't be the modern nations, the free and democratic nations, that will attack next. They know that a US response will be disastrous for them. It will the state whom the response will have no effect. Being bombed back to the 7th century inspire little fear from those already living there.

it will also be in the free and democratic states that extremism will be shunned, those who preach it stigmatized, and those who carry out the egregious acts of violence pursued and punished with the full force of the law and societal will.

When the jihadist is seen in his home as the Klan is seen here, we'll have won. There'll be no treaties nor any surrender ceremonies. We'll not know when we won, but we'll know that we did.

algore has got his new station up and running. Let's see what is supposed to attract the 18-34 demographic.

Japan Suicide
Sneakers
Some artist bio
human rights activist and his views on Christianity
A philosopical look when your number appears on Paris Hilton's hacked phone list
who controls the checkbook in a marriage
A young pastor (whose church sign has a rainbow flag on it. Hmmm...)

I have some advice for you Al. Want to attract the vital 18-34 year old audience. Two words.

Naked women.

It was ony a matter of time until he became a recipient. In fact, we're going to augment the V-Q award in honor of this person.

The city of Mandelinople is proud to announce the establishment of the Vichy-Quisling Lifetime Achievement Award given to individuals who have demonstrated not just a singular instance of, but a full lifetime of work aiding and abetting our enemies.

For the first time, the James Earl Carter, Vichy-Quisling Lifetime achievment award is presented first to...former president Jimmy Carter.

Iran and North Korea are both major threats to world peace, in pursuit or in possession of nuclear weapons, and in contact with terrorists. Both were sterling examples of Carter's foreign policy "brilliance".

In Zimbabwe, millions are being displaced, having their land confiscated, or outright killed. For fun, just google Carter Rhodesia.

Whether being hoodwinked by Chavez in Venezuela, welcoming Michael Moore to his box at the DNC, or taking Castro's side in a dispute with the State department, Carter is our enemies man on the scene.

His latest magnus opus? Well, anytime what you say makes it to al Jazeera, you know it's V-Q worthy.

Here's more

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England. "I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."
...
"I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false," he said Saturday.

Is there a way to impeach former presidents?

So, for aiding and abetting terrorists, giving them validity for their attacks, and for again, making our war effort more difficult by delcaring it unjust, the city of Mandelinople is proud to present the seventh Vichy-Quisling award to former president Carter. In recognition of his lifetime of service against our nation, we'd also like to formally present him with the James Earl Carter, Vichy-Quisling Lifetime Achievement Award for dubious and deleterious service against one's country. You've earned it.

One of the recurrent themes I have written about is the fifth columm, the domestic enemy, the seditious element within our country that is actively engaged in aiding and abetting the enemy. Many belong to the democratic party, many are just brain dead members of the hollywood left. The worst offenders are the supposed very defenders of our liberties, the press.

As Michael Fumento notes, Mainstream media suppress Iraq optimism.

Just today, Jack Kelly notes that we are making substantial gains in Iraq.

(hat tip Powerline)Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-D.C. -based think tank, has been pessimistic about Iraq. He returned from a recent visit singing a different tune:

"If current plans are successfully implemented, the total number of Iraqi military and police units that can honestly be described as trained and equipped should rise from 96,000 in September 2004, and 172,000 today to 230,000 by the end of December and 270,000 by mid-2006," he said.

Any guesses as to why this news is recieving so little attention?

It is fair, and accurate, to conclude that the press has chosen sides in the war. And it is also fair, and accurate, to conclude they have chosen the other side. Do they really wish a jihadist victory or simply of US defeat? I presume they wish only a US defeat, as if that coin only had one side. Either way, they are clearly the enemy within.