Maryland’s new education chief, Carey Wright, an old-school champion of rigorous standards, is pushing back against efforts in other states to boost test scores by essentially lowering their expectations of students. States, including Oklahoma and Wisconsin, are making it easier for students to demonstrate on annual assessments that they are proficient in math and English… Continue reading Schoolhouse Limbo: How Low Will Educators Go to ‘Better’ Grades?
Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance
Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance In the run-up to the Paris 2024 Olympics, the French government has authorized wide-reaching use of AI software in security surveillance feeds By Anne Toomey McKenna & The Conversation US It won’t be just human eyes monitoring the thousands of security cameras at the… Continue reading Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance
The Two Thanksgivings Between Halloween and Christmas
In the United States, November 11th has been known as Veterans Day since 1954 (before that, it was known as Armistice Day). Originally, Veterans Day commemorated the Allies’ victory in World War I. However, after the Second World War, veterans of that conflict including Dwight Eisenhower pushed to expand the holiday to honor all veterans.… Continue reading The Two Thanksgivings Between Halloween and Christmas
Domestication Squished Dogs’ Heads and Obscured Their Emotions
Domestication Squished Dogs’ Heads and Obscured Their Emotions Pugs, Boston terriers, bulldogs and boxers—dogs with less wolflike facial features are worse at conveying their feelings By Lori Youmshajekian Michael Svoboda/Getty Images Centuries of breeding to make our canine companions suit human aesthetics have left them less able to communicate through facial expressions than their wolf… Continue reading Domestication Squished Dogs’ Heads and Obscured Their Emotions
Debate May Help AI Models Converge on Truth
In February 2023, Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Bard claimed that the James Webb Space Telescope had captured the first image of a planet outside our solar system. It hadn’t. When researchers from Purdue University asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT more than 500 programming questions, more than half of the responses were inaccurate. These mistakes were easy to… Continue reading Debate May Help AI Models Converge on Truth
Even Shapiro Couldn’t Have Saved PA for the Democrats
Elections often tell you less about the winners than the losers. Victory has many fathers, as the saying goes, but defeat shows you exactly what went wrong. Pennsylvania’s 2024 results offer a master class in Democratic collapse: while Trump edged out Kamala Harris by 2 points in the presidential race, Republicans romped to victory in… Continue reading Even Shapiro Couldn’t Have Saved PA for the Democrats
Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows
Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows An issue with a commonly used security software called Crowdstrike shuttered large technology systems around the globe, including airlines, transit systems and stock exchanges By Alan Woodward & The Conversation US Cargo planes at an airport. magical_light/Getty Images The following essay is reprinted with… Continue reading Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows
Bernie Marcus Was One of the All-Time GREATS
“Get out of the car! Get the f**k out of my car.” That’s a paraphrase of the words of the recently passed, and incomparably GREAT Bernie Marcus. Marcus, along with Arthur Blank and Ken Langone, co-founded The Home Depot. The individual Marcus ordered out of his car was a venture capitalist, and more crucially for… Continue reading Bernie Marcus Was One of the All-Time GREATS
The Mystery of Medjugorje
Podcast: Download MYS337: The Virgin Mary has reportedly been appearing to 6 young people in Medjugorgje in Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1981. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli begin a 3-part look at what is happening, the Vatican’s long-awaited decision on the phenomena, and whether the apparitions are genuinely supernatural. Get all new episodes automatically and for free:… Continue reading The Mystery of Medjugorje
Project 2025’s Blueprint for a Second Trump Presidency Spells Out How to Harm U.S. Science
Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education. It would impose religious and conservative ideology on the federal civil service to such an extent that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has, dubiously, tried… Continue reading Project 2025’s Blueprint for a Second Trump Presidency Spells Out How to Harm U.S. Science