STEM Education and Sequestration

For John, BLUF:  People often use terms when they don't understand what the term means.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

In The [Lowell] Sun on Thursday was an article♠ titled "Mass. schools could take $13.9M hit".  The reporter was Jack Minch of Sentinel and Enterprise.  In the report Mr Glen Shor, Secretary of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, was quoted as making the following comment:

Those include Title 1 grants for urban and less affluent districts; IDEA grants to help special-needs students; and grants to support STEM subjects such as science, technology, engineering and math, he said.

"STEM subjects such as"?  What other STEM subjects are there, given that STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math?

It looks like Mr Shor was either trying to cook the books a little or just doesn't understand STEM.  The alternative theory is that he was handed a piece of paper to read, and thus was undermined by his friends and colleagues.♥

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Remember, articles in The [Lowell] Sun go away after a while, to a different place.  I will not be updating their links unless I am bedridden and have read every book in the house.

♥  Perhaps we could call Ambassador Susan Rice to testify about this sort of thing.

In Rome

For John, BLUF:  Our Elector, Cardinal Seán, is in place, in Rome.

Cardinal Seán, our local Ordinary, blogged about his experiences this last week, getting to Rome for Pope Benedict XVI's retirement and to be in place for the Conclave to elect the new Pope.

Regards  —  Cliff

Saving Star Trek History Preservation

For John, BLUF:  .  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Fortunately, there are people who take Star Trek seriously.  For example, there is Adam Schneider, a principal at Deloitte, who purchased, for $70,150, the ENTERPRISE Shuttlecraft GALILEO.  We have reporter Thomas Vinciguerra, reporting in The New Yorker, to thank for an update on the status of the Shuttlecraft.

Live long and prosper.

Regards  —  Cliff

Social Commentary

For John, BLUF:  Managers and workers.

This was sent to me by my youngest Brother, with the title "Workplace Diversity", but it may be about organizational structure.

DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Recently, a large corporation hired several cannibals to increase their diversity.  "You are all part of our team now," said the Human Resources rep. during the welcoming briefing.  "You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don't eat any employees." The cannibals promised they would not.

Four weeks later their boss remarked, "You're all working very hard and I'm satisfied with your work.  We have noticed a marked increase in the whole company's performance. However, one of our administrative assistants has disappeared.  Do any of you know what happened to her?"

The cannibals all shook their heads "No."

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, "Which one of you idiots ate the administrative assistant?"  A hand rose hesitantly.  "You fool!" the leader continued.  "For four weeks we've been eating managers and no one noticed anything.  But NOOOOO, you had to go and eat someone who actually does something."

I liked it.

This is the Brother who complained to me, a couple of decades ago, about having to go to a diversity training session where the instructor made the point that we had to learn how to work as a culturally diverse population, so we could compete with the Japanese—the Japanese, which is one of the least diverse populations on the face of this earth.  Actually, having a culturally diverse population might be a strength, if we can learn to take advantage of the alternative ideas in such a population, but on the face off it, it doesn't seem like a good way to compete with a monolith such as Japan.  Success in such a situation does require a certain commonality of goals.

Regards  —  Cliff

Want A Political Appointment?

For John, BLUF:  Getting a political appointment is a political process.

If you are interested in a political appointment in a Presidential Administration this article might be of interest—"Want to Work in the White House?"

The author has experience in this process:

Rosa Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown University and a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation.  She served as a counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy from 2009 to 2011 and previously served as a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department.  Her weekly column runs every Wednesday and is accompanied by a blog, By Other Means.

I know the US Ambassador to a Middle East Nation from my time in the Air Force.  He and his wife worked hard to help Senator Barack Obama get elected President.  That is the amount of help I can provide you.

Regards  —  Cliff

Future Adjectives

For John, BLUF:  First Day, but we have many more to come.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

This being the first day of Sequestration, it is time to look at how bad it will be.  On 23 February there was this article in The [Lowell] Sun, "Deep national-park cuts seen in budget standoff".♠  I blogged about it here.

One of the questions in my blog post was what adjective The Sun would use when the cuts moved past 5%, given that they were using "Deep" for the first traunch of cuts.

To help out the reporters and editors of The [Lowell] Sun I have put together this table from my computer thesaurus:

extending far down	cavernous	yawning
gaping	huge	big
great	extensive	profound
unplumbed	bottomless	immeasurable
fathomless	unfathomable	(rare) chasmic

No need to personally thank me.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Remember, articles in The [Lowell] Sun go away after a while, to a different place.  I will not be updating their links unless I am bedridden and have read every book in the house.

Good Sequestration Impact

For John, BLUF:  Saving Air Force flying hours.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Law Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, The Instanpundit, writes:

I WISH OBAMA WOULD DO SOME COST-CUTTING LIKE THIS: CODEL Cutbacks:  Boehner Tells Members They Have to Fly Commercial.  “House Speaker John A. Boehner announced on Wednesday that members will no longer be allowed to travel by military aircraft on Congressional delegation trips.  The Ohio Republican told members that because of the spending cuts mandated by sequestration, he will cut the costs of the taxpayer funded trips by suspending the standard military aircraft and making members fly commercial.”

I’m liking this sequester-thing more and more . . .

Makes sense to me.

Regards  —  Cliff