OMG. Over a year since the last post! You would think I took a vow of silence. But, you would be wrong. You might even think I devoted myself to 365+ days of non-stop golf. But, you would be wrong, although I award extra credit to those kind thoughts. Instead, the real answer is a combination of too much work and slow writing. My post topics transit quickly from current events to history before I hit "PUBLISH." Maybe I can stick with a Jewish New Year resolution to more frequent, brief blog posts. Why not?
My wife printed a NY Time Magazine article from July 28 titled, "Why Do Americans Stink at Math?" I got through half a dozen paragraphs. Make math interesting. Get students to investigate ideas instead of droning at them and assigning repetitive homework. Yeah. So? The educational stench covers all topics. English, history, science. Even in our sports-obsessed culture, phys ed is short shrifted. Foreign languages, art, music? Feh.
Which bring's me to Paul Krugman's latest theme expressed in his NYT columns and blog that explores the mystery of the unrepentant. Why is it, he ponders in a repeating excess of spilled electrons, that economists whose ideas failed miserably post-2008 continue to defend those ideas against Terabytes of data? PK has it wrong. People rarely change their minds about anything. Most ideas and opinions are simple prejudices: limbic beliefs based on nonsensical pre-conceptions. Intellectual arguments are ineffectual tools. We are emotional beings, and emotion trumps intellect every time.
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