Students, put those laptops away if you want to learn more

The New Neo Posted on by

And take up a pen.

The evidence indicates that taking notes by hand leads to more learning. The article lists reasons why this may be so:

The experiment found that the students who used a laptop did not understand the lecture as well as those who wrote their notes out by hand. The researchers hypothesized that this was because students who wrote notes by hand had to process what the lecturer was saying and, in effect, summarize what was being said to keep up with the lecture. Additionally, they found that laptop note takers had a “tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim,” which mean they were less likely to process information into their own words…

Writing things by hand is becoming less common as gadgets and speech recognition software continue to replace pen and paper, but it’s long proven that handwriting improves motor skills, memory, and creativity.

In the article there’s a link on the word “improves” in that last sentence of the quote that goes to this 2014 piece from the NY Times:

“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collé¨ge de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.”…

The effect goes well beyond letter recognition. In a study that followed children in grades two through five, Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, demonstrated that printing, cursive writing, and typing on a keyboard are all associated with distinct and separate brain patterns ”” and each results in a distinct end product. When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas. And brain imaging in the oldest subjects suggested that the connection between writing and idea generation went even further. When these children were asked to come up with ideas for a composition, the ones with better handwriting exhibited greater neural activation in areas associated with working memory ”” and increased overall activation in the reading and writing networks.

Anyone who has composed on a computer vs. by hand probably has already perceived that difference, up close and personally. I certainly have, and I wrote a post about it that appeared on this blog in 2008. Here’s an excerpt:

Before the word processor and then the computer, I used to compose all my papers in longhand and correct them the same way, with many crossouts and additions. Once I was satisfied (or a few hours before the paper was due, whichever came first) I’d type it on my Smith-Corona, using whiteout or erasable typing paper to correct the inevitable typos. It felt like a laborious process, and it often was; I’m not the greatest typist, and Spellcheck was hardly a gleam in anyone’s eye.

So when the instantly correctable word processor and then the computer became readily available, it seemed almost miraculous. How wonderful to watch the lines jump into place when a word was removed, magically and seamlessly closing the gap.

But I noticed that my writing was changing in some subtle fashion. It was difficult to be as imaginative as before; the thoughts seemed more stilted, although the words themselves flowed onto the page far more efficiently.

But I found to my dismay that I simply could not write poetry that way, although I could edit my poems. I had to write poetry longhand. Not that much of a hardship, really, since poems tend to be relatively short.

It seemed that there was an actual physical difference in the way the hand accessed the brain and the creative juices depending on whether that hand was writing or typing. Why this should be so I do not know, but it has persisted. To this day, I write poetry only by hand, although humorous verse (like my song parodies on this blog) can easily be accomplished on the computer.

I originally felt quite strongly that my writing in general suffered when I used a computer. I’m not so sure that’s true anymore, but perhaps it is. I wouldn’t know, because I so seldom compose things by hand these days (except poetry, which I don’t compose all that often, but when I do it’s almost always by hand). Perhaps I’ve traded creativity for convenience. Or perhaps my brain has gotten much more used to working this way.

I’m really happy that these days I’m not often in a lecture taking notes. I used to detest that form of learning, which I described in this 2006 post:

Even though I was always a good student, I rarely enjoyed classes. In retrospect, I think one big reason was the “sit in your seat and listen while we talk””and talk””and talk” format. In college, I was one of those people who sat at the very back of the room during lectures, swinging my leg restlessly, doodling and smoking.

Ah yes, kids: smoking. We used to be allowed to do that in classrooms. I was never much of a smoker””I really didn’t inhale””but I liked to light up, and to amuse myself by making perfect, long-lasting smoke rings, like the old Camel’s ad in Times Square (mine were much better than his).

The point of all this is that I’m most definitely not what is known as an auditory learner. A speaker has to be riveting””and, preferably, very, very funny””to catch my attention. I’ve been to several authors’ book and/or poetry readings, and despite my best intentions and resolve (and love of books and poetry), I find that I ordinarily drift off within five minutes or less of the moment the author opens his/her mouth, “coming to”””unaware of any lapse in time””only when the applause starts that signifies the reading has ended.

When I was in college, if I’d had a laptop instead, my guess is that I’d be tempted to surf the web instead of taking notes. I always preferred the text to the lecture—I could cover the material so much faster that way. Every now and then there was a riveting lecturer in college, but alas, they were few and far between.

“Credible” stories

The New Neo Posted on by

In the wake of the recent spate of sexual offense allegations, “credible” and “credibly” are the latest buzzwords.

Just as an example, take this Politico piece, which is by a former Bush speechwriter named Matt Latimer [emphasis mine]:

In the wake of the Roy Moore fiasco, a number of “hot takes” have made their rounds in the media. How obviously hypocritical it is, for example, for evangelical leaders to stand behind a man credibly accused of sexually assaulting a minor…

…How have we reached a point in this country when nearly half the voters of a U.S. state so mistrust, and even revile, major media outlets that they are willing to brush aside credible evidence and elect an accused sexual predator simply out of spite? …

…[We live in an] an era where some 50 people can credibly report sexual misconduct allegations about a Senate candidate to a major newspaper and yet that candidate still has a chance to win…

The rest of the article goes on to give a fairly good, if limited, description of the liberal/left bias of the press, and why the right has come to distrust it (although it doesn’t go into why that distrust is not just limited to the right). But what is with this “credible” business? I’ve seen it over and over to describe the Roy Moore allegations, as well as allegations against other figures in cases in which I don’t find the allegations especially credible although they might be true.

What is Latimer talking about when he writes that “50 people” have “credibly report[ed] sexual misconduct allegations” about Moore? I’ve never seen the number 50 in connection with that story. But Latimer just throws the number out there without explanation or details or names or even a link. Is that credible? The closest I can find to what he might be referring is the following, and it’s not at all close. It’s from the WaPo article in which the story originally broke:

This account is based on interviews with more than 30 people who said they knew Moore between 1977 and 1982, when he served as an assistant district attorney for Etowah County in northern Alabama, where he grew up.

That’s the sort of assertion that often gets tossed into the mix, until it’s almost literally impossible to remember what has actually occurred in a story and what hasn’t. What’s more, because all the Moore accusations have been lumped together (as often happens in these cases), it’s easy to forget that there are only two women (one of whom was underage) who have alleged acts of Moore’s that could be called some sort of assault. If you care to try to sort out the actual accusers, here’s a list that I believe is comprehensive.

What does “credible” mean in terms of the accusations against Moore or against anyone else? The word is defined this way:

1. capable of being believed; believable:

2. worthy of belief or confidence; trustworthy:

Those two definitions are very different, are they not? Definition number one fits the accusations against Moore (I’m talking about the two serious accusations rather than the kissing, the latter of which is more credible and which Moore has not even strongly denied), and they certainly might be believed. They’re not fantastical, not literally impossible; they might be true. I won’t go into the reasons to disbelieve them—there are many, some of which have been discussed previously on this blog—but suffice to say that reasonable people can differ on this issue.

Personally, I’ve come to have considerable doubts about the stories of these witnesses, but I still consider that they might be telling the truth. However, they might be lying, and there are reasons to think so. That brings us to definition number two. Are the two accusers worthy of belief or confidence? I see no reason to invest that sort of trust in them, due mostly to a host of glitches in their stories and the timing of the accusations.

But according to the current PC belief system, women are credible by definition, merely on account of being women. We are supposed to believe women without serious challenge to their stories or even any serious fact-checking. This is a pernicious and dangerous sort of reasoning that leads to miscarriages of justice, both in the legal system and outside of it. It makes it impossible—literally impossible—to separate the wheat from the chaff, truth from fiction. It allows anyone with a political agenda and the will to create a good story to destroy a political figure or other public figures.

“Believe the women” is meant, however, to correct for a different sort of injustice: that of letting sexual assaulters/harassers go free because the allegations can’t be proven. In the past, that was the more likely scenario, but now that’s been turned on its head.

Each camp is going on “credible” evidence rather than anything even remotely approaching highly convincing evidence. Much of it is an emotional reaction to the accuser’s tale, and reflects a sort of hubris about our ability to detect a liar vs. a truthteller, based on that emotional reaction (and sometimes an over-identification based on personal experience). Almost any story about anyone can sound “credible” unless it contains obviously fanciful elements that are literally impossible. Are we all now required to believe any allegation by a woman against a man that is not impossible?

The sudden shock of liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

Things are different in Zimbabwe—for now:

For 37 years, it was the official newspaper of Robert Mugabe. Then, this month, the staff of the Zimbabwe Herald got an impossible assignment: They would have to cover the downfall of their benefactor.

In the days after Mugabe was detained by the military, editors and reporters gathered in a wood-paneled newsroom in an old office building downtown, trying to figure out what to do…

Suddenly, a newsroom that had been the mouthpiece of the regime was without a censor.

“In the past we could never criticize the president,” said Felex Share, a political reporter, in the hours before Mugabe’s resignation. “Right now, we can touch anything.”

When I was in college, I had a boyfriend who lived in an apartment. He owned a cat. Now, I’m not really fond of cats, but I don’t wish them any harm, so one day we decided to give the cat a rare treat—we would take him outside.

This cat was an inside cat. I don’t think he had ever been outside, and he was already a couple of years old. In our naivete, we thought the cat would love it. But as we carried him out, he began to screech in a way I’d never heard a cat scream before—high-pitched sounds of utter panic. His face was scrunched up in fear, and he was shaking.

I can’t remember if we had a leash with us, or how we had intended to keep the cat in line if we put it down. But there was no need for that; this cat wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t going to leave my boyfriend’s arms, didn’t want to be put down on the ground, didn’t want to be there at all.

After a while, we took the cat back inside, and never tried the stunt again. Now that I’m older, I think there might have been a way to accustom him more slowly to the big wide world. But at the time, we just abandoned the endeavor. But the cat’s fear surprised and impressed me with how terrifying unaccustomed freedom can be.

Now, the staff at the Zimbabwe Herald are most definitely not cats. But they are people unused to being able to speak their minds and/or the truth without the fear of punishment. It must be disorienting and frightening to some of them to have had that threat removed, or seemingly removed, at least for the moment.

That feeling might be heightened by a self-selection process whereby the employees at the paper had to be people who were able to compromise themselves and be the mouthpieces of a tyrannical government. Maybe some of them were even True Believers (not uncommon even in this country); who knows?

I hope they manage the transition better than my boyfriend’s cat did. And I hope the iron hand of tyranny doesn’t clamp down on them again, as I fear it might.

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Bot says, “Do you have a spam problem?”

Nice of you to ask.

Actually, spam comments wax and wane in mysterious fashion. For a couple of years there I was getting about 10,000 a day. Yes, you read that right: ten thousand a day, almost all of them captured by my trusty (but sometimes overzealous) spam filter.

Then one day, apropos of nothing, the number of spam comments went down to about 300 a day. That lasted for another year or two, and now it’s creeping up past 1,000 again.

I don’t know what accounts for the ebb and flow, but my guess is that WordPress figures out some algorithm to block them more successfully for a while, and then the spammers figure out a way around that, and then the cycle repeats itself. As long as the filter keeps working effectively, it really doesn’t matter to me—or to my readers—if three hundred comments a day are blocked or ten thousand a day. But if anything even remotely resembling that number ever got through—well, perish the thought.

My blog keeps count of the number of spam comments blocked since I went to WordPress about ten years ago, and at the moment it’s 14,185,862.

Mind over matter

The New Neo Posted on by

If you think you’re a woman, and are taking the correct hormones, now you can even compete in weightlifting as a woman:

Laurel Hubbard has been named to the New Zealand women’s weightlifting team for the Commonwealth Games, sparking controversy in the sport.

Hubbard, 39, will be the first transgender sportsperson to represent New Zealand.

That seems completely wrong to me. I’m certainly not the only one:

Australian Weightlifting Federation chief executive Michael Keelan on Friday claimed Hubbard would have both a physiological and mental edge over her rivals.

Speaking to the Australian Associated Press, Keelan noted that: “If you’ve been a male and you’ve lifted certain weights and then you suddenly transition to a female, then psychologically you know you’ve lifted those weights before.

“I personally don’t think it’s a level playing field. That’s my personal view and I think it’s shared by a lot of people in the sporting world.”

“Personal view”? No, it’s a fact that is almost impossible to deny, although I assume that before Hubbard was approved by the committee, there were plenty of people who had to deny it:

…Olympic Weightlifting New Zealand said she met International Olympic Committee regulations related to acceptable testosterone levels.

A man can be taking testosterone-blocking hormones and yet that man still retains the male shoulder structure, as well as some of his muscular advantage. That’s not rocket science. A person can be in favor of non-discrimination against transgender people (as I generally am) while still retaining enough grasp of reality to understand that allowing Hubbard into a women’s competition is unfair to biological women.

Political correctness triumphs, however, and what used to be common sense—which banned someone like Hubbard in official competitions of this nature—has been overruled:

Previous rules banned trans and intersex people from taking part in sports unless they met a string of requirements.

However, in a bid to resolve some of the issues, the International Olympic Committee adopted a more relaxed policy.

Restrictions on trans men taking part in men’s events were largely lifted.

Trans women still face some obstacles to taking part in women’s events, requiring a consistent testosterone level “below 10 nmol/L” ”“ but there is no longer a restriction relating to gender surgery.

I agree that the “gender surgery” part is quite irrelevant, unless there’s some sport of which I’m not aware where the genitalia come into play. But I disagree that testosterone level is all that matters and is the only thing worth measuring that might confer an advantage.

Female-to-male athletes are not the problem, because it’s quite obvious that genetic females have little to no advantage in sports over men (something like synchronized swimming excepted, and in which female-to-male athletes aren’t competing anyway because there is no male competition in synchronized swimming—although see this). The potential problem is the male-to-female transition:

The intense scrutiny of transgender athletes has focused on trans women because it is generally assumed that transitioning from a woman to a man would not confer a competitive advantage.

Sports organizations have sought a test for sex verification to ensure fairness across all sports. This began in the 1940s with ‘femininity certificates’ provided by a physician. In the 1960s, visual genital inspections were used to confirm gender, followed by chromosomal analysis to ensure that all athletes had an XX or XY chromosomal makeup. These tests were all designed to ensure that athletes were only allowed to compete as their sex, but mostly resulted in the exclusion of intersex athletes.

More recently,[when?] testosterone levels have become the focus and, at the same time, new guidelines have been sought that would allow successfully-transitioned athletes to compete…

…Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics at UCLA and a consultant to the IOC medical commission, stated: “There is 10 to 12% difference between male and female athletic performance. We need to categorize with criteria that are relevant to performance. It is a very difficult situation with no easy solution.”

Actually, there is a very easy solution (“easy,” that is, except in the political sense): ban transgender athletes from official competition of this sort, in which the sexes are differentiated and there are male-only competitions and female-only competitions. This is not some arbitrary discrimination due to bigotry or prejudice. This is based on biology. If you’re going to divide sports into male and female you’ll have to limit them. A biological male cannot enter a woman’s race, so why should a male who has transitioned to being a transgender female?

As for Hubbard:

[Last April], New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard set new masters world records while competing at the World Masters Games in Auckland, New Zealand. Hubbard made a splash in March when she was the first transgender woman to represent New Zealand in weightlifting at the 2017 Australasian Championships. At that meet, Hubbard snatched 123kg/271lb and clean & jerked 145kg/319lb on her way to gold across the board and new New Zealand weightlifting records.

Do those golds and that record have asterisks beside them?

There’s another problem, one that’s highlighted in this video that’s mainly about Hubbard. It’s more or less the opposite problem. The younger female-to-male transitioning athlete—let’s say, in high school—is a woman who’s taking testosterone and would therefore tend have an advantage over other females. But she’s born female and ordinarily at that age still has the genitalia of a female, and competes as a female at the high school level:

The education gender gap: fathers and sons

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been clear for a long time that boys do worse than girls in school these days. This is true for all socioeconomic levels and all races, but there are differences in the degree of the gap, depending on circumstances:

On average, about 83 percent of Florida students were kindergarten ready. Among the children with the best household circumstances, there was a gender gap of about 2 percentage points. Among children with the worst household circumstances, the gap was much larger. Boys in broken families were 8 percentage points less likely than girls to be kindergarten ready.

And you can pretty much bet that in these “broken families,” the vast majority of the children are raised by single mothers, and many of these children have fathers who are nowhere to be found. Such a situation impacts negatively on both boys and girls, but it stands to reason that the lack of a positive, loving, stable masculine role model and guidance would be particularly hard on boys.

The article goes to great length to avoid or at least minimize “father absence” as a factor. For example, a quote like the following seems curious to me. The author seems to approach the issue of absent fathers in the second sentence, but then shies away from it in the next sentence with the more generic “parental attention” and “how much time parents spend with them”:

Because of their tendency to act out, boys may be in particular need of parental guidance ”” but because poor families also tend to be single-parent families, mom or dad time is a scarce resource. A 2015 study from economists Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan showed that boys are particularly at risk when they grow up in single-mother households. When boys don’t get enough parental attention, they misbehave. Girls, in contrast, are less likely to misbehave regardless of how much time parents spend with them.

The article (and perhaps the study on which it is based?) doesn’t try to isolate father-absence out as a variable. But I have a hunch that it’s one of the most potent factors of all, and that it has a synergistic effect when combined with poverty and race. I would also imagine that the fact that elementary school teacher are overwhelmingly females is part of the picture, too. And the requirement that children sit quietly at desks for lengthy periods of time also would seem to be hardest on boys (I remember that from my own school days, although I had a lot of trouble with desk-sitting, too).

And it’s not too early to do some holiday shopping on Amazon through the neo-neocon portal

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

Christmas, Chanukah, and whatever other holiday might suit your diverse fancies are all coming up sooner than you think. So I’m encouraging you to feel their hot panting breaths on your necks. If you care to solve your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon, please use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year). When you do that, you’ll also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and without spending any extra money yourself.

I thank you all in advance, and I thank all of you who’ve already done your shopping through my blog. I’ll be bumping this up and/or re-posting it every now and then until Christmas.

If you’re not an Amazon fancier, you could donate through Paypal, of course. Hey, you could even do that if you are an Amazon user. I appreciate every single penny.

In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).

Travel day

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s a travel day for me. I’m returning from my Thanksgiving holiday, and plan to be home this evening and post something new then.

So till then…keep enjoying your weekend!

Terrorist attack in Sinai kills over 200

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been a terrible terrorist attack in Egypt:

Egyptian state news agency MENA is reporting that the death toll from an attack on a mosque in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula has risen to 235 people killed. The attack appeared to be the latest by the area’s local Islamic State affiliate. It added that 109 people had been wounded.

The attack on the al-Rawdah mosque, largely attended by Sufi Muslims, in the town of Bir al-Abd, 40 km (25 miles) from the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish.

Officials said militants in four off-road vehicles bombed the mosque and fired on worshippers during the sermon segment of Friday prayers.

ISIS may not hold a lot of territory anymore, but that doesn’t stop it from brutally murdering people. Sufi Moslems are particularly infuriating to ISIS (the likely perpetrators) because it’s a different sect that is more tolerant and less militant in general. More here:

Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam that some ultra-orthodox Muslims consider heretical…

The mosque in the northern Sinai is known as the birthplace of an important Sufi cleric.

This is the sort of barbarism that was involved:

The gunmen had set up “ambush” locations and opened fire on ambulances as they were transporting wounded worshippers from al-Rawdah toward al-Arish before the arrival of security services, eyewitnesses reported.

Too much information about Rep. Joe Barton

The New Neo Posted on by

Representative Joe Barton has learned a few facts of which everyone should be aware (read the link to understand what I’m talking about).

The first is that anyone over the age of thirty—certainly anyone over the age of forty—should never be sending nude photos or videos of him/herself to anyone not completely known and completely trusted. I would even amend that to omit all the words in that sentence after “anyone.”

Actually, it’s not a really smart idea at any age—and I include nubile young teens who trust their would-be-boyfriends or ex-boyfriends or hookup partners or sexting friends not to “share” the photos rather liberally. It doesn’t matter if the photos/videos were solicited. Many people may be the stars of their own porno flicks in their own minds, but it usually doesn’t translate that well to actual porno flicks in the real world or the cyberworld.

Another thing Joe Barton may have learned is that the people with whom one might be inclined to have a sexting and/or other uncommitted sexual relationship are not necessarily the un-scuzziest among us. That’s certainly something a member of Congress would do well to take into consideration. And that advice is not just limited to the members of Congress (and their members).

Barton showed an extreme lack of judgment. But he’s not guilty of anything other than stupidity and foolishness (and perhaps unfaithfulness to his wife, although I’m not sure of the time frame), whereas the woman (or women) in question may be guilty of something called “revenge porn.”

When I was young, the invention of the Polaroid camera enabled ordinary people to take their own pornographic photographs (not videos). Before that, one had to take or send a roll of film out for others to develop it. I believe that back then, ordinarily, the companies that did this would usually refuse to send people their photos back if they were deemed to be too racy. Otherwise, a person had to have his or her own darkroom, an investment most people weren’t inclined to make for a momentary thrill.

Now any spur-of-the-moment impulse can be indulged through any number and type of recording devices, and instantly disseminated (pun intended) around the world. Not necessarily a good idea.