The end of a very frustrating day in academia. It's mostly off-topic (not dealing directly with the storm to come), but shines some light on why it is coming at all.
Below is an edited version of an email which I sent to a colleague in our college of education.
I am also rather distressed by your comment:
"A PhD is a terminal degree which means we are capable of self-teaching material we are unfamiliar with".
I know a great deal of mathematics, computer science, statistics, engineering and physics. I would still have much trouble teaching something like Abstract Algebra, and I have had several courses in the subject. It's not all 'just math'.
The problem, which is very close to that of our meeting today, is that mathematics is one of the most tiered subjects there is. As one of my administrative superiors told me, many subjects have an 'Intro' course, after which one can take any number of courses. This just isn't true for our discipline, until about the senior level. That is why we take the issue of prerequisites and previous material so seriously.
It is also upsetting to experts in other fields (especially education) that success at one level of mathematics is no guarantee that one will ever succeed at higher levels. A previous administrative superior couldn't understand it at all, which is one of the reasons why he publically stated that learning algebra was unnecessary 'for anyone'.
In (not so) short, this is why I take the problem of training future mathematics and science teachers so seriously. With all too many school administrators having the idea (as another administrative superior told me) that 'anyone can teach math', no wonder that we have the problems that we do.
I have been party to many discussions on mathematics education on usenet and elsewhere. Every single time, my honorable opponent criticizes how the subject is taught. They then either offer no ideas at all, or ones which have already been shown to fail elsewhere.
Ponder this: Mathematics has been taught as a discipline in its own right for about 2,500 years. The subject itself lends itself to brutal editing and revision, so that only the most robust facts and proofs survive. Given those millions of man-years of developing and teaching the subject, isn't it reasonable to suppose that we are doing some of it correctly, or at least we might know better than outsiders?
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
USA housing fraud summarised
Hat-tip: Karl Denninger
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
News items for UK investors
Catch up pension contributions from previous years!
From the new tax year starting 6 April 2011, you should be able to catch-up on unused pension contribution allowances from the previous 3 years, according to this business briefing - so long as you have a pension plan already in force that could have taken those contributions.
Inflation-linked savings
Birmingham Midshires are offering a 5-year fixed-term savings product that will grow by the rate of inflation (plus a bit). Please see here for details. Unfortunately it's not an ISA, so taxpayers will have to pay tax on the growth according to their tax rate and allowances - but it's an interesting proposition for non-taxpayers who just want to preserve the value of their savings. Closing date for the first issue of this plan is 10 March.
Have you given up smoking for at least a year so far?
If you have, then are you still paying your life assurance premiums as though you're a smoker? Rewriting your cover, or simply informing your insurance company (with evidence as appropriate), could save you money - see this article for details.
State Pension mix-up - check you're still on target!
There's been another computerised mess, this time with National Insurance Contributions, stretching back years, as this article explains. HMRC may not necessarily inform you if you're affected. I'd suggest you ask for an updated State Pension Forecast to be sure that you're not heading for a shortfall - click on this link to get one!
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
From the new tax year starting 6 April 2011, you should be able to catch-up on unused pension contribution allowances from the previous 3 years, according to this business briefing - so long as you have a pension plan already in force that could have taken those contributions.
Inflation-linked savings
Birmingham Midshires are offering a 5-year fixed-term savings product that will grow by the rate of inflation (plus a bit). Please see here for details. Unfortunately it's not an ISA, so taxpayers will have to pay tax on the growth according to their tax rate and allowances - but it's an interesting proposition for non-taxpayers who just want to preserve the value of their savings. Closing date for the first issue of this plan is 10 March.
Have you given up smoking for at least a year so far?
If you have, then are you still paying your life assurance premiums as though you're a smoker? Rewriting your cover, or simply informing your insurance company (with evidence as appropriate), could save you money - see this article for details.
State Pension mix-up - check you're still on target!
There's been another computerised mess, this time with National Insurance Contributions, stretching back years, as this article explains. HMRC may not necessarily inform you if you're affected. I'd suggest you ask for an updated State Pension Forecast to be sure that you're not heading for a shortfall - click on this link to get one!
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
Folding a T-shirt in two moves
Saw this at a conference yesterday, I don't think I'll be able to resist trying it:
Monday, February 07, 2011
New "Seeking Alpha" article on liquidity and market breakdown
"Seeking Alpha" has just published my latest post on QE, debt and the economy, which I can't reproduce here for commercial contractual reasons - but please click on the link below to read it there:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/251137-this-liquidity-will-soak-us-all
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/251137-this-liquidity-will-soak-us-all
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Blair: a sign of repentance
Mr Blair was also forced to admit his public statements about the legality of the war contradicted those of the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.
He said he was making a ‘political point’ not a legal argument ‘but I accept entirely that there was an inconsistency between what he was saying and what I was saying’. - Daily Mail
The Spectator says the Tories are in thrall to Blair - ‘There are two things I’ll always try and clear my diary for,’ one minister told me, ‘watching Brian Lara bat and Tony Blair talk.’
It seems to me that the present administration's admiration is coldly, immorally professional - and deeply mistaken. For the last few years under Blair, as my wife will witness, I simply switched the sound off when he was given airtime on TV news - I couldn't bear to hear the brazen lying.
This is the man for whom current PM David Cameron got his then Opposition party to give a standing ovation in Parliament - a break with that House's tradition. Honourable exception: "Mike Penning, who had been a Tory communications chief before the 2005 election, remained defiantly seated with crossed arms." Perhaps there were others who stayed in their seats that day, and if so I'd like to know who.
But there is some evidence that Blair may not be quite as sold on himself as the rampaging Tory toffs. Although he will defend his wicket stoutly against those, quite possibly no better than he, who are trying to stump him, I begin to suspect that there is still an atom of shame and decency in him, as the end of the following extract shows:
At the end of his testimony, Mr Blair was approached by Reg Keys, whose son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys, 20, was killed by a mob in southern Iraq in June 2003. Mr Keys said: ‘I just wanted to say that you are a disgrace to your office.’
Mr Keys told the Mail: ‘He wouldn’t look me in the eye.’
He may yet, and probably as he sincerely wishes, be saved.
He said he was making a ‘political point’ not a legal argument ‘but I accept entirely that there was an inconsistency between what he was saying and what I was saying’. - Daily Mail
The Spectator says the Tories are in thrall to Blair - ‘There are two things I’ll always try and clear my diary for,’ one minister told me, ‘watching Brian Lara bat and Tony Blair talk.’
It seems to me that the present administration's admiration is coldly, immorally professional - and deeply mistaken. For the last few years under Blair, as my wife will witness, I simply switched the sound off when he was given airtime on TV news - I couldn't bear to hear the brazen lying.
This is the man for whom current PM David Cameron got his then Opposition party to give a standing ovation in Parliament - a break with that House's tradition. Honourable exception: "Mike Penning, who had been a Tory communications chief before the 2005 election, remained defiantly seated with crossed arms." Perhaps there were others who stayed in their seats that day, and if so I'd like to know who.
But there is some evidence that Blair may not be quite as sold on himself as the rampaging Tory toffs. Although he will defend his wicket stoutly against those, quite possibly no better than he, who are trying to stump him, I begin to suspect that there is still an atom of shame and decency in him, as the end of the following extract shows:
At the end of his testimony, Mr Blair was approached by Reg Keys, whose son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys, 20, was killed by a mob in southern Iraq in June 2003. Mr Keys said: ‘I just wanted to say that you are a disgrace to your office.’
Mr Keys told the Mail: ‘He wouldn’t look me in the eye.’
He may yet, and probably as he sincerely wishes, be saved.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
A stark warning from Harry Schultz
Legendary investment consultant and trader Harry Schultz has been publishing his financial newsletter since 1965. He has just retired with a sombre finale that is rapidly circulating on the Internet. Peter Brimelow at Market Watch gives us some extracts from that last letter, e.g.:
"Roughly speaking, the mess we are in is the worst since 17th century financial collapse. Comparisons with the 1930’s are ludicrous. We’ve gone far beyond that. And, alas, the courage & political will to recognize the mess & act wisely to reverse gears, is absent in U.S. leadership, where the problems were hatched & where the rot is by far the deepest.”
I think we are now clearly beyond the time when bearish commentators can be dismissed as melodramatic alarmists. Harry Schultz is no Chicken Little blogger but has appeared in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's highest-paid investment consultant. Maybe that makes him a Chicken Big.
The 400-year timescale in the extract above chimes with the ideas of D H Fischer's "The Great Wave" and other theorists who see very long term cycles in economics. But they are largely cycles of human social behaviour, so can we still break out? Santayana warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", so maybe knowing how it's played out before will help.
Schultz is not alone. He himself quotes a former financial officer of Ronald Reagan as saying recently: "We’re entering a global monetary conflagration. If a sell-off of U.S. bonds starts, it will be an Armageddon." In that context, Schultz does not see gold as being in bubble territory yet.
For Schultz's shorter-horizon defensive investment advice, see below as quoted by Brimelow; longer-term, we may have to seriously consider what to do in the event of a major disruption to normal living.
Here's what Schultz says for the boys still absorbedly playing the high-stakes card game in the first-class saloon of the Titanic (or the Laconia, or the Lusitania - whichever one gives you the bittersweet spine-tingle):
• 5-10% Stocks (nongolds).
• 15-20% Commodities: via futures, commodity stocks &/or physical assets.
• 50% gold stocks & bullion: 15% blue chips, 5% junior, 5% bullion via futures, 25-35% in physical bullion.
• 0% currencies (“Close out ALL fiduciary time/call deposits, money market funds & municipal bonds, pension funds…”)
• 1-5% Cash in hand. (“Stored privately.”)
• 0-5% bear stock market protection via ETFs like ProShares UltraShort Dow30
• 15-20% Government notes/bills/bonds (“In 3-6 month T-Bills/bonds only — buy these only in Swiss Francs, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, Brazilian reals, Singapore dollars, Chinese Yuan only).”
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
"Roughly speaking, the mess we are in is the worst since 17th century financial collapse. Comparisons with the 1930’s are ludicrous. We’ve gone far beyond that. And, alas, the courage & political will to recognize the mess & act wisely to reverse gears, is absent in U.S. leadership, where the problems were hatched & where the rot is by far the deepest.”
I think we are now clearly beyond the time when bearish commentators can be dismissed as melodramatic alarmists. Harry Schultz is no Chicken Little blogger but has appeared in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's highest-paid investment consultant. Maybe that makes him a Chicken Big.
The 400-year timescale in the extract above chimes with the ideas of D H Fischer's "The Great Wave" and other theorists who see very long term cycles in economics. But they are largely cycles of human social behaviour, so can we still break out? Santayana warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", so maybe knowing how it's played out before will help.
Schultz is not alone. He himself quotes a former financial officer of Ronald Reagan as saying recently: "We’re entering a global monetary conflagration. If a sell-off of U.S. bonds starts, it will be an Armageddon." In that context, Schultz does not see gold as being in bubble territory yet.
For Schultz's shorter-horizon defensive investment advice, see below as quoted by Brimelow; longer-term, we may have to seriously consider what to do in the event of a major disruption to normal living.
Here's what Schultz says for the boys still absorbedly playing the high-stakes card game in the first-class saloon of the Titanic (or the Laconia, or the Lusitania - whichever one gives you the bittersweet spine-tingle):
• 5-10% Stocks (nongolds).
• 15-20% Commodities: via futures, commodity stocks &/or physical assets.
• 50% gold stocks & bullion: 15% blue chips, 5% junior, 5% bullion via futures, 25-35% in physical bullion.
• 0% currencies (“Close out ALL fiduciary time/call deposits, money market funds & municipal bonds, pension funds…”)
• 1-5% Cash in hand. (“Stored privately.”)
• 0-5% bear stock market protection via ETFs like ProShares UltraShort Dow30
• 15-20% Government notes/bills/bonds (“In 3-6 month T-Bills/bonds only — buy these only in Swiss Francs, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, Brazilian reals, Singapore dollars, Chinese Yuan only).”
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
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