Peter Norvig's quotes page

I very much like these quotes from Peter Norvig's quotes page:

Far and away the best prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
- Theodore Roosevelt

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
- William James

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle

I don't see any god up here.
- Yuri Gagarin (in orbit, 1961)

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.
- Vannevar Bush (1945)

Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
- Ted Nelson, on the Microsoft DOS operating system

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
- John McCarthy

Belief is no substitute for arithmetic.
- Henry Spencer

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
- Charles Babbage

In the future, search engines should be as useful as HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey--but hopefully they won't kill people.
- Sergey Brin

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
- Voltaire

I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.
- Richard Nixon

If I have made myself clear, you must have misunderstood me.
- Alan Greenspan

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Rhonda Farkota's 2005 Opinion piece

Below is a summary of a 2005 article by Rhonda Farkota about what needs to be done to fix maths education in Australia. Rhonda Farkota has done the research to pass judgment on this question. Her PhD thesis is available at the bottom of this page. Subsequent to her 2005 article she has published two books providing the materials required for basic maths education.

My question is: Has anything significantly changed since 2005?

Basic maths: the brutal reality by Rhonda Farkota (2005)

1. Results show that maths education is failing at primary school level
2. The problem is the way in which maths is taught, not the ability of our students
3. Both student centred learning and teacher centred learning have their place in education
4. But for the acquisition of basic mathematical skills, the research clearly shows that teacher-directed learning is better suited
5. Yet almost every teacher-education program in Australian universities is based on a student-directed approach. Indeed, some academic advocates of student-directed learning reject the whole idea of teacher-directed instruction, arguing that mathematical ideas must be personally constructed by the students themselves
6. This is nonsense: it’s totally unrealistic to expect children, unaided, to learn theories and concepts that have taken mathematicians millennia to put together
7. There is a dire urgency for the academics of the education world to put less emphasis on the ideology they feel most comfortable with, and instead, to have a long hard look at the evidence
8. Unfortunately, the teachers of today have neither the time nor the training to sit down and design complex maths curricula, and then go through a comprehensive evaluation process.
9. Fortunately, there are already highly effective, research-based, teacher-directed programs out there, requiring no preparation and no mathematical expertise to implement

Direct Instruction: observations at Djarragun college

I've just returned from a 4 day observation at Djarragun College near Cairns during their first week of Term 2.

Their programme is directed by NIFDI (National Institute For Direct Instruction), an American group set up by Zig Engelmann. The initiative to implement this in Australia originated with indigenous leader Noel Pearson, as outlined in his essay Radical Hope.

In the following I describe some of the characteristics of the NIFDI programme.

Without fail, every school day, from 9am to 1pm there are 3 hours of English language instruction (broken up into decoding, comprehension, writing) and 1 hour of Maths instruction

The lessons are  heavily scripted. The various teachers manuals are thick books with precise instructions about how lessons must be delivered. So all the teachers are pulling consistently in the same direction. Robotic yes, but they are good robots.

This aspect of the program has major, major implications. Scripting lessons takes away from teacher creativity or autonomy. All teachers are delivering in quite similar ways. Does the lack of diversity in this respect matter? For instance, in education a methods war between the relative virtues of constructivism (which emphasises the value of children exploring) and behavourism (which emphasises formal transmission of knowledge from teacher to student) has been  going on in various guises for years. NIFDI is as behaviourist as you can get so there is bound to be substantial opposition from constructivists or from those who advocate some sort of even balance between the two apparent extremes.

With NIFDI, student participation is close to 100%. Quite often this takes the form of chanting in unison in response to a signalling system from the teacher (finger click or tap on a book). Students are  trained to not answer until the teacher signals so the "smart" students don't dominate and the "slow" students don't hold back. Everyone participates. I observed this being consistently implemented in a variety of primary and middle school classes

The curriculum, from what I observed, is very purposeful. Engelmann claims to have developed curriculum design to the level of a precise science. There is a strong emphasis on logical elements in the comprehension part of the curriculum such as deductions, inference etc. (and of course much more). For example, in one lesson about the skeletal and muscular body systems these elements of curriculum design were included in rapid succession: Deductions, Evidence, Classification, Definitions, Parts of Speech, Inference, Definitions and Following Directions.

Some of the features of the programme that struck me as unusual and / or interesting were:
(a) Strong emphasis on logical elements such as deduction, evidence and inference
(b) Continual verbal participation (chanting) from students. The chanting was not only copying what the teacher said but also performing logical operations independently, after initial preparation for this by the teacher
(c) Expectation and achievement of participation in all tasks by all students (not 100% in all cases but close to it in nearly all of the classes I observed)
(d) Lessons proceeded briskly, some tasks were strictly timed and the message that time was precious was both explicit and implicit.
(e) A system of student points and teacher points was present in all classes. Students obtained points for doing the right thing, teachers obtained points when students did the wrong thing (eg. not waiting for the signal before answering). The class receives a reward when a specified target of points is achieved.
(f) Virtually no misuse of mobile phones. Students who misuse phones may lose them for a week or even the whole term.
(g) Self checks and peer assessment in various contexts. For example, I gathered that reading was assessed every day in paired groups with one of the pair recording words read in, say, 2 minutes and the errors. This was then followed by a reversal of roles. I asked one of the students who recorded 2 errors for her partner what they were and she could tell me.

All class groups are based on current ability level and not year or age level. So you might see year 8, 9 and 10 students in the same class. Decoding and comprehension occurs before recess; Writing and Maths after recess. The class groups are resorted at recess since abilities in these subjects will vary.

The goal is always mastery learning (85%-90%) for each and every student.

The data collection process is both arduous on the teacher and awesome in its scope. A copious amounts of data is collected each week by each teacher. Marking for each day must be completed by the next day. Students are reassessed each day for items they have not achieved mastery learning in the day before. If there are 3 strikes on an assessment item then the student is dropped to a lower ability group.

Much of the work from the previous day is repeated in slightly different form next day. There might be only 10 or 20% of new material taught each day. Hence continual repetition is built into the program.

The biggest problem is poor attendance. Hence the need for Noel Pearson's other community based initiatives to get students to attend regularly. See How do miserable people progress in the world?

The data is faxed to a  Direct Instruction expert in Canada once a week and this is followed by a conference call to discuss progress. So, there is an external expert continually advising and also checking that no one is drifting off from full implementation of the package.

In other schools teachers deviate all over the place, this is the first school I have seen where that is strictly not allowed. I observed some minor deviations but no serious deviations.

So, one outcome from the Engelmann approach is the ability to scale. For this to happen you need both the broad scope of a well designed and scripted curriculum (coverage of all aspects of literacy and maths) and the rigour of copious data collection and checkups. Without those elements scaling could not be achieved. That is what Engelmann provides which no one else does. Teachers do become like robots (in some, not all, ways). But through the rigour of the scripting they are purposeful robots and so on the mass scale much more is being achieved than would be achieved in the normal course of events, with teachers pulling and pushing in a variety of different directions (even with some of those directions being educationally sound ones and justified in isolation from each other)

There is a huge potential for spottiness and teachers not implementing the NIFDI approach properly. From what I saw in various classes there were subtle differences of implementation creeping in. But they were subtle, not serious deviations. Of course these would deviate further if there wasn't a rigorous way to prevent it. This explains why NIFDI have put in place such rigorous checkups through their data collection process. Part of me still doesn't like that side of it (the restriction on teachers ability innovate in their own, sometimes creative ways) but certainly I can see the necessity for it.

Hence other methods can and do work in isolation (good teachers in isolated classrooms) but the NIFDI approach seems to be the only one to provide all the elements necessary for scaling whereas other methods out of respect for teachers independence do not scale. And scale is everything since we have a large percentage of indigenous Australians who can't read, write or do basic maths. Other methods have failed.

 I'll also mention that I'm a big fan of Seymour Papert's constructionist approach to teaching with computers and have employed that approach successfully in both middle class and disadvantaged schools in Adelaide (1, 2). But when working in a disadvantaged school in Adelaide's northern suburbs I realised I had to incorporate much more behaviourist type approaches in my teaching due to the low starting point of many of the students there. See my 1998 article The place of behaviourism in schools which advocated a mixture of methodologies and I still think provides a valid critique of some aspects of behaviourism. (See footnotes 1, 2 and 3 in particular. These issues still need further research IMO) - edit 27th April.

Noel Pearson has also significantly influenced my thinking after I heard him speak in Adelaide about 10 years ago. Subsequently I have read most of his writings. When I read "Radical Hope" I thought interesting but education isn't really his primary area of expertise so he's being one sided here and going overboard in his support for Engelmann. I then read some Engelmann and thought interesting but he's too angry and criticising all forms of constructivism and I know that some forms of it are good, since I have been a successful practitioner. But then I couldn't get away from Engelmann's proven success in Project Follow Through and so gradually came to the view that I should look more closely at his DI approach and what still seemed to me to be exaggerated claims. I've now come to the belief that for disadvantaged students in particular who haven't grasped the fundamentals of language and maths that Direct Instruction is the best method developed that I am aware of.

Many thanks to Don Anderson (Principal) and the teachers and administrators of Djarragun College for permission to observe and for discussion about their implementation of Direct Instruction

Reference:
Ending the groundhog day of educational reform (Noel Pearson speech, 2011)

Footnote: A shorter version of this article was published in The Australian on May 3rd, 2012: Noel Pearson's Aboriginal college gets top results

freedom is good, control is bad; control is good, freedom is bad

The Vietnam war protest movement taught me that rebellion was good and government bad, that freedom was good and control was bad.

In applying this principle to education, the methodology of behaviourism seemed to symbolise the main thing that was wrong with School and Education. That it was BORING.

edit (23/4):
Behaviourism and / or rote learning was a sophisticated form of child abuse, a denial of freedom.


The Vietnam war had a racist element to it. Moreover racism at home directed at indigenous Australians took the form of either genocide or assimilation. Assimilation was equivalent to cultural death, a denial of indigenous culture.
/edit

Seymour Papert taught me that computers could be used in hands on personal ways that empowered naive users in deep ways, that personal learning was good and rote was bad (1).

But the experience working in a disadvantaged school taught me that behaviourist learning had its place in education too (2).

Noel Pearson taught me that the most difficult problem of social inequality, that of indigenous Australians, could be analysed and progress made (3).

Peter Sutton taught me that the indigenous question still remained an incredibly difficult problem (4).

Zig Engelmann taught me how to scale learning using behaviourist educational design (direct instruction) (5)

Hence, I have gone full cycle, returning to my starting point and seeing the same issues with new eyes. That freedom can be dangerously misguided and control can be good.

 reference:
(1) Papert's ideas: Mainly from Mindstorms
(2) The place of behaviourism in schools
(3) Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia
(4) The Politics of Suffering
(5) Zigsite

capitalism kills

Suicide note left by the 77 yo Greek pensioner who shot himself dead outside parliament on Wednesday morning:

 "The government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state.

 "And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting... I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don't find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance."
- Greek unrest after pensioner suicide beside parliament

Update: 9th April Amazing. Not only does capitalism kill but the capitalist media censored out the identification of the enemy and the call to arms in the above suicide note. So someone commits suicide and leaves a protest note. The capitalist media edits the contents. It's upsetting that we don't have a free press. But not only is it not free it also slimy and manipulative and can't even honour the final wishes of its own victims. The full message reads:

The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state.

And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance.

I believe that young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945. source

BBC slimy version
NYT slimy version

why left brain/ right brain theories won't go away

Here's my theory about why left brain/ right brain theories which overreach won't go away.

First up, people love to describe themselves as either left brained (logical, mathematical) or right brained (creative, artistic, wholistic). Why? Because that provides a convenient biological explanation about why they are good at some things and not good at other things. "I can't learn this because my brain won't let me". That has a nicer feel to it than "I can't learn this because (a) I can't be bothered (b) it's not important to me (c) some other reason".

Secondly, people worry about the state of the world: economic inequality, wars, environmental catastrophe, crappy politicians, insanity / delusions, apparent failed alternatives in other social forms that temporarily deluded millions (eg. communism), suicide bombers, 9/11, religion etc. Well, to explain all this requires a lot of hard thinking and it is embarrassing to be a member of the human race given the reality that we are collectively quite immature and still working out how to govern ourselves in a semi competent fashion. So, it's reassuring to have a biological theory that the left brain and right brain are somehow out of sync or causing us to focus on the wrong things rather than doing the hard work of actually figuring out the real factors that determine our social development.

So, that's my theory of why left brain/ right brain theories which overreach won't go away.

Reference:
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Ian McGilchrist (the Introduction can be downloaded for free)

  Reception to the above book as documented by wikipedia. Mostly very positive reviews by influential people, with the notable exception of The Economist.

  The human brain: Right and left. The Economist review, which is the one I like.

Modern myths of learning: The creative right brain
Sensible review of the history and current state of the science

 What Marvin Minsky said about half brain theories in his 1987 book, Society of Mind:

The two hemispheres of the brain look so alike that they were long assumed to be identical. Then it was found that after those cross connections are destroyed, usually only the left brain can recognise or speak words, and only the right brain can draw pictures. More recently, when modern methods found other differences between these two sides, it seems to me that some psychologists went mad - and tried to match those differences to every mentalistic two part theory that was ever conceived. Our culture soon became entranced by this revival of an old idea in modern guise: that our minds are meeting grounds for pairs of antiprinciples. On one side stands the Logical, across from the Analogical. The left side brain is Rational; the right side is Emotional. No wonder so many seized upon this pseudoscientific scheme: it gave new life to every dead idea of how to cleave the mental world into two halves as nicely as a peach.

What's wrong with this is that each brain has many parts, not only two. And though there are many differences, we also ought to ask about why those left-right brain halves are actually so similar. What functions might this serve? ...
(see sec 11.8 Half Brains and 11.9 Dumbbell Theories for more details)

Yes, some psychologists went mad, and some are still going mad.

Judith Curry interview on climate change

The IPCC May Have Outlived its Usefulness

 Some extracts:

 OP: What are your personal beliefs on climate change? The causes and how serious a threat climate change is to the continued existence of society as we know it.

 JC: The climate is always changing. Climate is currently changing because of a combination of natural and human induced effects. The natural effects include variations of the sun, volcanic eruptions, and oscillations of the ocean. The human induced effects include the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, pollution aerosols, and land use changes. The key scientific issue is determining how much of the climate change is associated with humans. This is not a simple thing to determine. The most recent IPCC assessment report states: “Most [50%] of the warming in the latter half of the 20th century is very likely [>90%] due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.” There is certainly some contribution from the greenhouse gases, but whether it is currently a dominant factor or will be a dominant factor in the next century, is a topic under active debate, and I don’t think the high confidence level [>90%] is warranted given the uncertainties.

 As I stated in my testimony last year: “Based upon the background knowledge that we have, the threat does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation.”

OP: You are well known in climate and energy circles for breaking from the ranks of the IPCC and questioning the current information out there. What do you see as the reasons for the increase in skepticism towards global warming over the last few years.

JC: Because of the IPCC and its consensus seeking process, the rewards for scientists have been mostly in embellishing the consensus, and this includes government funding. Because of recent criticisms of the IPCC and a growing understanding that the climate system is not easily understood, an increasing number of scientists are becoming emboldened to challenge some of the basic conclusions of the IPCC, and I think this is a healthy thing for the science.

OP. What are your views on the idea that CO2 may not be a significant contributor to climate change? How do you think such a revelation, if true, will affect the world economy, and possibly shatter public confidence in scientific institutions that have said we must reduce CO2 emissions in order to save the planet?

JC: Personally, I think we put the CO2 stabilization policy ‘cart’ way before the scientific horse. The UN treaty on dangerous climate change in 1992 was formulated and signed before we even had ‘discernible’ evidence of warming induced by CO2, as reported in 1995 by the IPCC second assessment report. As a result of this, we have only been considering one policy option (CO2 stabilization), which in my opinion is not a robust policy option given the uncertainties in how much climate is changing in response to CO2.

OP: Do you believe that the language used in papers and at conferences is a problem? The public just wants straight answers to questions: Is the climate warming, By how much, and what will the effects be? Scientists need to step out from behind the curtain and engage the public with straight answers and in their own words. Is this achievable, or is climate science too complex to be explained in laymen’s terms? Or is it because even climate scientists can’t agree on the exact answers?

JC: I think the biggest failure in communicating climate science to the public has been the reliance on argument from consensus. We haven’t done a good job of explaining all this, particularly in the context of the scientific disagreement

For more Judith Curry see Climate etc.

the roots of socialism grow out of the perversions of capitalism

Joe Scientist comes face-to-face with the scientific publication business

Rhonda Farkota's educational philosophy explained in five paragraphs

 The student-directed versus teacher-directed learning debate is an ancient one; indeed, the polemic goes back to Plato. In her doctoral research (The Effects of a 15-minute Direct Instruction Intervention in the Regular Mathematics Class on Students’ Mathematical Self-efficacy and Achievement) the author carried out a comprehensive review of the relevant research and literature, and reached the inescapable conclusion that some skills were better acquired through one approach and some through the other. When it came to the employment and cultivation of higher order skills where reasoning and reflection were required it was clear that a student-directed approach to learning was better suited. But when it came to the acquisition of basic skills the empirical evidence unequivocally showed that a teacher-directed approach was best suited.

It is well accepted that problem solving skills operate from a knowledge base that has been acquired through practice; in fact, genuine competence in both problem solving and basic skills only comes with practice. Significantly though, it is actually when the base knowledge in a discipline is being acquired that the foundations for effective problem solving are being laid. Because the essential knowledge required for automaticity is stored in students' long term memory, it is best retained when explicitly taught and practiced repeatedly. This automaticity originating from practice empowers students to maximise their mental capacity by concentrating exclusively on the more complex task of problem solving.

It is also well accepted that to perform a task competently one requires not only the requisite skills, but also the self-belief in one's ability to implement performance. In the learning process this is termed self-efficacy, and when laying the foundational skills in mathematics, or for that matter any academic discipline, it is important that student self-efficacy be accomodated. Students with low self-efficacy in a particular skill area are reluctant to engage in tasks where those skills are required, and if they do, they are more likely to quit when encountering difficulty.

Students engaged in the learning process automatically monitor their progress, and for this reason the capacity to self-evaluate progress is an integral and ongoing component of the JEMM program. Because JEMM tasks gradually increase in difficulty, students have clear criteria by which they can independently assess their performance and gauge their progress. As they progress they acquire more  skills and become more proficient at the self-evaluation process.

JEMM lessons were deliberately designed not to be seen as tests, but this is precisely what is happening on a daily basis; without being conscious of it, students are willingly engaging in ongoing assessment. As such the lessons serve as a powerful diagnostic tool clearly mapping students' progress, identifying precisely where and when they are experiencing difficulty. The students' responses provide teachers with reliable diagnostic information similar to that which could only be acquired from a formal test situation. Because students receive daily feedback on their performance they are acutely and immediately aware of their progress, which strengthens their self-efficacy, sustains their motivation and enhances their academic achievement.

source:  JEMM = Junior Elementary Maths Mastery, page x

a tux moment

A great photo from Tony Forster's blog.

Rhonda Farkota: Australia's Direct Instruction maths expert

PhD thesis:
  The Effects of a 15-minute Direct Instruction Intervention in the Regular Mathematics Class on Students’ Mathematical Self-efficacy and Achievement by Rhonda Maree Farkota

 Currently I've read Chapter 2 which describes, compares and evaluates the constructivist and Direct Instruction methods in maths teaching. It does leave out Papert's constructionism (a common fault in most of these reviews) but otherwise does provide a comprehensive comparison of the different methodologies and demonstrates the superiority of Direct Instruction in practice.

She is a specialist in the US developed teaching model, Direct Instruction (DI), and has designed and developed her own DI model. She has conducted professional development and lectured on Effective Teaching Practices at universities, schools and seminars throughout Australia. Rhonda continues to conduct professional development in these and related fields and in 2010 she presented to the Singapore Ministry of Education. In 2003 she was nominated for the 2003 National Learning Difficulties Australia Award in recognition for her work in learning disabilities.
- source

In the past few days I have seen the materials developed by Rhonda Farkota Junior Elementary Math Mastery - JEMM

... a mental math program ... suited for middle primary, and upper primary remedial students. Requiring only 10–15 minutes daily to implement, plus 3–7 minutes for instant feedback ...

  Elementary Math Mastery - EMM

... a mental math program ... suited to upper primary, first year secondary and secondary school remedial students, and requires only 15–20 minutes daily to implement, plus 5–10 minutes for instant feedback and correction proceedures.

 I'm very impressed. These are the materials which could make all the difference for the most disadvantaged students in Australia and elsewhere.

 Thanks Wayne.

some possible uses of information technology on the APY Lands

I visited Peter Ruwoldt at Grant High School in Mt Gambier, during his farewell sessions at the end of the 2011 school year.

 Peter (Wara) is working as an educator at Ernabella in 2012, with the possibility of this continuing for 5 years. Peter began his teaching career at Fregon in the 1980s and is now returning to the APY Lands. Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) is a large Aboriginal local government area located in the remote north west of South Australia

Peter has a very strong background in IT technology and education and is expert in both Open Source and Windows based educational applications and is very familiar with the constructionist educational concepts promoted by Seymour Papert and Mitch Resnick. He has won various awards for his IT work, such as CEGSA (Computer Education Group of South Australia) teacher of the year.

 CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES

• Use IT to support teachers in teaching reading and writing of Pitjantjatjara. 
• Cross age tutoring with older students being taught to teach younger students 

 IT IDEAS

Peter's idea is to trial various ideas on a small scale, see how the students respond to them and take it from there.

 1) Pitjantjatjara spell checker Open Office or Libre Office Writer has an option for setting to various languages, which, in turn can activate a spell checker in that language. Peter plans to work with Pitjantjatjara language specialist, Paul Eckert, to enable this option. This requires a Pitjantjatjara word list for the spell checker (to be supplied by Paul Eckert) and some XML to integrate the word list into Open or Libre Office (to be supplied by Peter, see The Locale Generator). I mentioned to Peter that something similar had been done by Roland Gesthuizen for the Khmer language.

 2) Graphics tablets
Bamboo pen and touch CTH-661/SO-C
Needs to be large and pressure sensitive
software: Canvas Paint
Students responded enthusiastically to this opportunity during a recent visit by Peter to Ernabella

 3) One laptop per child or xo
We noticed that on the OLPC australia google map that Amata Anangu School will have full saturation of xos in 2012 (18 xos deployed June 2011; 82 xos pending deployment in 2012 – full saturation) Peter may decided to deploy xos at Ernabella.

 4) Music recording and editing using Audacity (already happening to some extent?)

 5) Scratch is an educational multimedia visual drag and drop programming language. Peter plans to make template programs using Scratch to support teachers in teaching reading and writing of Pitjantjatjara.

For example: Unmarked object on screen which when you click on it plays a sound of a Pitjantjatjara word, eg. Punu (tree). Another object on screen which contains the word spelt out, punu. The user drags the spelt out word icon onto the sound playing icon and the program generates a reward of some type. Students could then proceed to making their own sound and word objects, creating their own word – sound dictionary.

 6) Peter shared with me the excellent year 9-10 IT course, which he has developed, which is available on moodle. The course includes these sections:

• Audio using Audacity
• Basic photo editing using Paint.Net or GIMP
• Diagrams and Vector graphics using Giffy
• Mind mapping using Bubble.us or Mindomo
• Making a small wiki about children's movies using wikispaces
• Developing a Screen Recording tutorial using CamStudio or TipCam
• Introduction to the Linux free operating system using the Ubuntu Live CD
• Make your own online Cartoons and Animations using Captain Underpants, ToonDo, Witty Comics or Comic Creator
• Computer Security
• Create an online survey, implement it and graph the results on a spreadsheet
• Use Google maps to pin point a particular area

Land of the Free, Home of the Poor

The extent of economic inequality is astonishing and underestimated by nearly everyone. PBS NewsHour’s Land of the Free, Home of the Poor with Paul Solman is brilliant and a must watch.

Over 90% of people interviewed underestimated the extent of wealth disparity picking the Swedish wealth profile as the one they thought represented America. Differences b/w Democrat and Republican voters were insignificant.

Reality:

• Top 20% possess 84% of the wealth 
• Second 20% possess 11% of the wealth 
• Third 20% possess 4% of the wealth 
• Fourth 20% possess 0.2% of the wealth 
• Fifth 20% possess 0.1% of the wealth 

In the last 10 years most of the change has been a dramatic increase in the wealth proportion of the top 0.1%

Warren Buffet:

Yes, there has been a class war in the United States and my class, the super rich, have won

Towards the end Richard Freeman points out that the extent of inequality in the USA matches that of China, still a mainly peasant society, and African countries.

Another reference which makes some similar points and also emphasises that across the political spectrum Americans desire a more equal society than the one they currently live in: Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time

First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

OLPC's XO-3 tablet

"if it works"

It sounds too good to be true that Nicholas Negroponte could deliver on both the most amazing computer hardware and also the holy grail of education - teaching reading without adult help. I would love to hear more detail about this software based adaptable reading program from anyone who knows more.

As part of a two-year project to study educational development among young children in developing countries, researchers will collect data from XO-3 tablets used by three-to-eight-year-olds in India, Tanzania and Sierra Leone. Software on the tablets will record audio and video and adapt a reading platform to the needs of the children without human intervention. The project will study how children interact with the tablet and will aid in the study of tools for self-learning and critical thinking among children. One goal is to provide basic comprehension and reading, which is important in countries where teacher training is inadequate.

"In the reading experiment, where we ask can a child learn to read on his or her own, we imagine many hours of use per day, as many as six or eight. Frankly, the reading experiment may be the most important thing I have ever done....if it works," Negroponte said.
- OLPC's XO-3 tablet to debut at CES

Footnote:
I looked up an old blog where alan kay said something about this during his 40th anniversary of the dynabook speech:

BUT, when Nicholas started up the OLPC project my heart sank, even as I supported it ... because if it's tough to get good mentors in the USA then it's really tough out in the Third World ... no user interace today can find out who its user is, what its user knows, what it can do ... it can't find out what level of reading the user can do and help find out the next level of reading

Australia's red centre

From my daughter's recent trip: Adelaide to Uluru

ending the groundhog day of educational reform

Some notes on a talk given by Noel Pearson on the launch of his book, Radical Hope, in September, 2011 :
Bringing Explicit Instruction to remote aboriginal schools in Cape York, Queensland

Primary school education was the hardest domain for us to penetrate. NAPLAN results over the past 3 years provided useful evidence to break out of failing education programmes. We could say to professional educators: “We can no longer leave the future of our children in your hands”. We could end the groundhog day of educational reform

The grandmothers in Cape York are more literate than their grandchildren. The Missions had succeeded in teaching children to read and write in their own indigenous language. Over the past 40 years indigenous children have become illiterate in both their native and English language

We arrived at the conclusion that in the Reading Wars, the Explicit Instruction / Phonics side of the war was correct.

MULTILIT (Making Up Lost Time in Literacy) and all Explicit Instruction programmes have their genesis in Direct Instruction, an American programme developed by Professor Siegfried Engelmann at the Universities of Illinois and Oregon. In early 2009 we visited the USA and subsequently formed a partnership with the American National Institute of Direct Instruction.

We established this programme in two Cape York primary schools: Aurukun and Coen. The programme consists of Class and Club. Class is the western curriculum. Club is indigenous culture.

The compulsory school day runs from 8:30 to 2:30. This is followed by a voluntary programme which runs from 2:30 to 4:30.

The new programme commenced on January 28, 2010. The first few months were marked by chaos, controversy, revolt and alarm. But eventually things settled down. There were 65 kids in the Time Out room one week. Then there were 3 kids the following week. This transition marked school acceptance of the new programme.

There is regular coaching of teachers in the required methods every 3 months. Each week there are mastery tests of the previous 5 or 10 lessons. Students do not move to the next level unless they achieve a 90% achievement score.

Every Tuesday morning there is a conference with coordinators in the USA with the Principals of Auruken and Coen. The operating assumption is that if the student has not learned then the teacher has not taught. There is no alibi for the teacher. The Principals main task is to lead instruction.

When kids experience success, then behaviour changes and interest engages.

Aurukun was possibly the worst school in Queensland. In 2009 police were called to the school 160 times, for a school of 230 students. The attendance rate was 30%. We are now 18 months into this educational reform.

FURTHER INFORMATION FROM THE Q&A SESSION AFTER PEARSON’S TALK:

Welfare System
The welfare system must be reformed from unconditional welfare to conditional welfare. Parents must meet four conditions to continue receiving welfare:
1. send children to school
2. children free from abuse or neglect
3. meet housing tenancy obligations
4. don’t break the Law

The welfare system has been funding dysfunctional lifestyles. The Commonwealth government has been paying for people’s drug habits. There has been unconditional financing of dysfunction. Welfare is not a wage, it is social assistance which comes with conditions.

Trust Accounts
Trust accounts were created to cover educational expenses (uniform, tuckshop, equipment, computers). The money comes from the parents. They are completely voluntary.

At Coen there was a 100% signup to the trust accounts. The trust accounts now contain $1500 per child and over 1 million dollars in total. The swift uptake of trust accounts persuaded us that parents care deeply about their children’s education.

Results
We use DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy), which is more informative than NAPLAN, to assess the progress of students. This tells us that:
- the top 30% is progressing at double mainstream speed
- 50% are progressing at above mainstream speed
- poor attenders continue to have poor results

Lack of Support from Education Department Bureaucracy
A Cairns Principal who was prepared to run a Direct Instruction stream was banned from visiting Aurukun by the Department!!

What sort of teachers are required for Direct Instruction?
The DI programme has been described as “teacher proof”. For Pearson the biggest surprise was that they are making progress with the stock, standard issue Queensland trained teacher. As long as the teacher is amenable to the program there are good results. However, teachers college has not taught these teachers how to teach reading!

sources:
audio: Noel Pearson: Radical Hope (the above notes are made from this extract)
video: Radical Hope Book: A Talk by Noel Pearson (the whole talk including an informative Q&A session)

alyawarre scratch file

I used Scratch to make a tiny multimedia dictionary (voice, pictures, words) for the Australian indigenous Alyawarre or Alyawarra language. It's available here. Three girls from wiltja provided the words and their voices. Alyawarre tribe is near Tennant Creek.

The words are:

• kungar = blue tongue lizard 
• numa = snake 
• loget = goanna 

I always remember the insightful words of Noel Pearson:

"Keep our diverse languages and cultural traditions by excelling in education and digital technologies, the only means of arresting the decline of our ancient and oral traditions"

chess swings and roundabouts

My chess results have been quite erratic of late. Currently I'm playing interclub in South Australia for the Modbury Club. I'm busy so for preparation all I really do is go through some tactical exercises in the Combinational Motifs book by M. Blokh, beforehand.

Last Tuesday I played against the new State Champion, Goran Srdic, and lost.

We did a quick post mortem after the game and Goran revealed that he thought his position was always good. I had played a risky move 16 which enabled him to cleverly win the exchange. Nevertheless, he had weak pawns and I had the 2 bishops so I thought I was still doing ok. His move 28 looked strong but I had thought of a brilliant reply, which I played. I thought he would have to give up his queen but he didn't. My attack petered out and he won the endgame easily.

This game stayed in my head, particularly the position after move 31. I recaptured his knight so I wouldn't fall too far behind on material. I was short of time. Eventually, a better move came to me without even setting up the position. It looked like I was winning now. How exasperating!

I setup the position to confirm my mental analysis and I'm pretty sure I'm correct. I could have won this game as a brilliancy against the new State Champ. Oh Damn! Here is the game.

White: Bill Kerr
Black: Goran Srdic
1. Nf3 d5
2. g3 Nf6
3. Bg2 Bf5
4. d3 c6
5. O-O h6
6. Nc3 e6
7. Nfd2!
I saw this maneuver in an online GM game a while back and liked it. White's e4 cannot be prevented and his pieces are well co-ordinated
7. __ Be7
8. e4 Bh7
9. Qe2
Black is now reluctant to develop his QN at d7 since then e5 from white would force his other night back to g8. So he decides to expand on the queenside instead.
9 __ a5
10. Kh1 Na6
Preparing f4. Since black has played __ a5 I didn't think he was planning to castle on the queenside so I'm going to attack him on the king side or centre.
11. f4 Nd7
12. exd!
Black has delayed castling and is vulnerable on the K file
12 __ cxd
13. f5! Bxf5
14. Nxd5 exd5
15. Rxf5 O-O
Initially, it looks like white will win the QP but that doesn't work out because black has a strong reply in __ Nb4. After thinking for 15 minutes I played a risky move.
16. Nf3?!
Possibly 16. c3 immediately is better
16. __ Bf6!
17. c3 Re8
18. Qf1 g6!
Winning the exchange
19. Rxd5 Nc7
20. Rd6 Qe7!
I was half expecting __ Nb5 here with a possible draw by repetition. (21. Rd5 Nc7 etc.) but Goran has seen further ahead than me this time
21. Bf4 g5
22. Ra-e1 Ne6
I had missed this move during my move 19 calculations
23. Rdxe6 fxe6
24. Bd2
Nevertheless, I have one pawn for the exchange and his pawns are weak and his king position is shaky. I thought the position was even but Goran thought he was winning.
24. __ Qd6
25. d4 e5
26. dxe Bxe5
This removes an important defender for the black king. But if he takes with the knight then 27. Nd4 is awkward
27. Nxe5 Nxe5
It would have been smarter if I withdrawn the B to c1 on move 24. Now I would have had more options.
28. Be3 Nd3
I saw this coming and initially it looked strong. But then I realised I could exploit the vulnerable position of the black king, with a great move!
29. c4!?
Probably 29. Re2 is good too. But this roll of the dice was worth it!
29. __ Nxe1
30. Bd5+
At this point I thought Goran would give up his queen and thought that would end in a draw by white implementing a perpetual check. 30 __ Qxd5 31. cxd5 Rxe3 32. Qf6 Ra-e8 (anything else looks too risky) and white has perpetual check. But Goran still thought he was winning.
30. __ Kh8
31. Bd4+ Re5

This is where I missed the win. I played the obvious 32. Qxe1 which gave black time to organise his defence. After 32 __ Ra-e8 33. Qe4?! Qf6! 34. h4 Kg7 35. Qg4 Kh7 black went on to win easily.

White missed a brilliant thirty second move which would have forced a win. Can you see it?

xo deployment in australia

View One Laptop Per Child Australia in a larger map

Legend:
Ear-marked or has expressed interest for deployment
Scheduled for deployment
Partial deployment
Full deployment - one laptop per child

One laptop per child australia has done a good job of deploying to remote aboriginal communities. This is best viewed at Google Maps but even in this version if you click on map icons you can obtain more detail of the deployments.

strange times

I guess that 2011 will go down as the year of the glorious Middle East democratic revolutions!

I have been doing most of my blogging at the Strange Times collective over the past three months. Here are links to some of my posts:

shock tactics in alice

No fly zone demand for Libya

the vlog that helped spark the egyptian revolution

The marxist theory of crisis

Hans Rosling’s fast forward history

the achilles heel of capitalism

a puzzle for some

Resources for studying “Capital” with emphasis on Value theory

As far as I can tell my future posts will be more frequent there and less frequent here.

Build Your Own Blocks

Build Your Own Blocks (BYOB) is an extension to the visual drag and drop programming of Scratch. It adds custom blocks, recursion, first class lists and procedures to the original.

The developer is Jens Mönig with design input and documentation from logo legend Brian Harvey.

There is a make a block shape in the Variables section. When you click on it an easy to use block editor comes up. First up, I made a block that draws squares, then followed up with a hex block and a star block. Here they are:

I am following a sequence suggested by Jens and Brian in their paper, Bringing 'No Ceiling' to Scratch: Can one language serve kids and computer scientists?

The next step is to draw a V shape with a randomly chosen decoration at each end. In a text based logo language this would look like:

to v
left 45 forward 50
run pick [square hex star]
back 50 right 90 forward 50
run pick [square hex star]
back 50 left 45
end

The tricky bit here is how to implement the line: run pick [square hex star] visually. Initially, I couldn't figure that out but my friend Tony Forster helped me with it:

And here is the whole v procedure, in visual block form:

This procedure draw shapes like this, (running it 3 times with different starting positions):

The next step illustrates how to do recursion in BYOB! Recursion means that a procedure calls itself. Here it is:

There are a couple of places where vee might randomly call vee causing the procedure to loop back on itself. Since it is random (item any) then the result are varied and unpredictable. Here are a couple of the more complex results:

As well as the paper by Jens and Brian make sure you read the manual which comes with the download, too.

The Climate Fix by Roger Pielke jnr

Here is my summary of his main points so far:

1. we will need VASTLY more energy in the future
2. the amount of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere is a big problem - both AGW and biogeochemical effects
3. so we have to decarbonise the energy supply, aka reduce carbon intensity C output / energy consumed (see Kaya identity section for more detail here)
4. decarbonisation makes sense from other perspectives too, eg. energy security for some countries (from a policy perspective it is important that there are some short and intermediate term gains from the pain or costs of policy)
5. the public will not accept a big C tax designed to change energy consumption behaviour - they will vote out any party that introduces it
6. small steps are better than grandiose plans that end up being rejected
7. there is not a linear relationship between climate science and government policy, Scientific findings in complex social issues do not dictate policy. Politics in a democracy requires public support. A non linear or oblique approach might work. The direct approach has failed (Copenhagen)
8. the public will accept a small dedicated C tax (rising slowly over time) to fund R&D; there is consistent public support for some action on climate change but not dramatic action which will alter standard of living
9. We need more R&D because present technology is not sufficient to do the CO2 reduction that is required – taking into account future economic growth and removal of CO2 from the ocean to reduce harmful biogeochemical effects, as well as from the atmosphere
10. Since the above steps do not provide a guarantee for targeted CO2 reductions then a backstop is also required
11. CO2 air capture and storage (remediation) is a potential backstop, which could reshape the climate debate, one of the targets for further R&D

the Nobel family has dissociated itself from the economics prize

One of the most annoying things is to read or hear an economist's views promoted because they have won the Nobel Prize. Hence, it is refreshing to hear that the Nobel family has dissociated itself from the economics prize

There are some good spoofs on this at Improbable Research:

2010 ECONOMICS PRIZE: The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof

2009 ECONOMICS PRIZE: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.

brain plasticity

Norman Doidge has written a book, The Brain That Changes Itself, about brain plasticity which has implications for our education system in general, those with learning disabilities and for senior citizens. Note the comment in the Kerry O'Brien interview below where it is argued that the decline of rote learning of long poems has contributed to declining oratory skills.

These theories developed in conjunction with Michael Merzenich have a great deal of scientific support. Check out the Norman Doidge video (on the brain and neuroplasticity, in 3 parts) and Michael Merzenich videos (TED talk, google talk) on the web.

Here is an extract from a 2008 interview with Doidge:

KERRY O'BRIEN: You write that humans instinctively were on the right track in the age of rote learning in education and you cite Abraham Lincoln's skill as an orator as an example. Can you elaborate?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Sure. In the '60s, there were things that were part of a kind of classical education that people did away with 'cause they thought that they were irrelevant like an almost fanatical attention to elocution and handwriting, or memorising long poems. But, it now turns out that what these activities did is they exercised very important parts of the brain that allow you to think in long sentences, have deep internal monologues and a certain amount of grace in all kinds of expression. And probably a lot of damage was done by doing away with these exercises that were there for good reasons we didn't understand.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You mean that they have reduced the scope of the functions of a child's brain as they grow to adulthood?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Yeah. The simplest example would be memory of long verses of poetry. It allows you to speak in public and have long, deep paragraphs of thought in private. When you reduce the amount of memory in those processors, we're reduced to a world of sound bites.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So, somebody else might say, well, you know, the kind of oratory of a Lincoln is simply a lost art. You would add to that; you would say it's a lost art …

NORMAN DOIDGE: That can be recovered.

KERRY O'BRIEN: ... but a lost art that was lost in the way we learnt, which you connect to the plasticity of the brain.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Most definitely.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Does mainstream science take it as seriously as it should?

NORMAN DOIDGE: I would say that mainstream neuroscience is now smitten with neuroplasticity as the new revolutionary paradigm that is giving us great insights in the levels of activity that are going on in the brain. And an example of it is just the following amazing fact: that when you think thoughts or learn something, you actually turn on genes inside the nerve cells in your brain to change the number of connections between those cells. You can double them in a matter of hours between nerve cell A and nerve cell B. So, what we've discovered with neuroplasticity is that consciousness can direct genetic expression, and neuroscientists are looking at all the sort of points along that trail from consciousness, ultimately to structural change in the brain and altered behavioural expression as one of the chief tasks right now.
- Kerry O'Brien speaks with Norman Doidge

crises of capitalism (David Harvey)

This talk contrasts five different mainstream theories of the economic crisis with David Harvey's Marxist analysis. He build the talk around the rhetorical device of a question which the Queen asked the London School of Economics: How come you guys didn't see the crisis coming?

The very entertaining RSA ( (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) artistic animation enhances the presentation considerably.

ethical consumption debunked (Zizek)

I love the way this Slavoj Zizek talk is animated by RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and some of his argument about how post 1968 capitalism offers redemption for the consumer through ecological sound purchases is spot on, too.

Some snippets, just phrases:

... the anti consumerist duty to do something for the environment is included (in your purchase)

Starbucks coffee ethics ... good coffee karma

... through a consumerist act you buy your redemption of being a consumerist

He then quotes extensively from Oscar Wilde in a polemic against all charity. Some of that was challenging but overall I wasn't so supportive of that section. It is one thing to expose phony "ethical consumerism" but I don't think all efforts to reform the system from within are misguided. "One laptop per child" is a good example of reform from within initiated by philanthropists which empowers the recipients.

Capital chapter one (Laurence Miall's blog)

Capital by Karl Marx, Chapter 1 - blog by Laurence Miall

Laurence writes in an entertaining (and self deprecating, not claiming to be a Marx guru) manner replacing Marx's commodities of linen and coat with the more modern examples of gasoline, iPads and cat kibbles.

I think his summary of the most difficult chapter of Marx could be improved by a deeper analysis of the value form. I cite some references below which I found particular helpful in coming to grips with this. Here are some extracts from Laurence's article with comments:

para 10: “David Harvey really saved my pea brain from total meltdown here. It turns out that value is socially necessary labour time. This is to say that what gives a commodity value is the labour that went into it”

This is true but incomplete in that it is limited to the magnitude and substance of value. Value also has a social form  (the capacity to be exchanged as an equal with another commodity) as well as a substance (embedded abstract labour) and magnitude (socially necessary labour time).

para 11: “And lastly, what gives my cat kibbles their exchangeability is the fact that they hold value: their value is that they provide a use-value for somebody else (in this case, for James, because he can feed my yummy cat kibbles to his own cats)”

This mixes up value and use value in a way which muddies the concept that value is a historically contingent social form, a social construct which eventually took on the form of money. In another type of society (pre or post capitalist) the cat kibbles would not have value at all. Imagine a society where your neighbor James just took the cat kibbles (no exchange) and that wasn’t regarded as theft. There is enough cat kibbles for everyone, no scarcity. Without exchange there is no value.

para 22: “Furthermore, the quantities are pretty arbitrary too. What makes 20 pounds of linen the basis of comparison? Why not 50 pounds? Or one pound?”

Those quantities in the general value form are not arbitrary. They are equivalents of socially necessary labour time required to produce those various commodities.

para 28 David Harvey quote: “People under capitalism do not relate to each other directly as human beings; they relate to each other through the myriad products which they encounter in the market.”

An issue which I found difficult to understand in Marx – in the same sense that Laurence qualifies Harvey’s quote - was Marx’s use of the word social in phrases like “socially necessary labour time” and in the commodity fetishism section, particularly the phrase “… material relations between persons and social relations between things”. My understanding now is that the use of the word social here relies on:

• a restricted sense of social to mean exchangeable on the market – not social in the more general sense of human social interaction
• the historical transformation of things into social forms, eg. products of labour become commodities, which as well as having use values are exchangeable (and hence social in that restricted sense)

So, appreciating value as a historically contingent social form I think adds a deeper dimension to Marx's analysis as well as helping to fathom out some of the ways in which he expresses himself.

Reference:
Marx, Karl: The Value-Form: Appendix to the 1st German edition of Capital, Volume 1, 1867 (link)
Rubin, Isaak Illich: Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, esp Ch 12: Content and Form of Value (link)

Geoffrey Canada

I've been participating in a discussion with Tom Hoffman about the Harlem Children's Zone and Geoffrey Canada's role in the Waiting for Superman video (which I haven't seen in full). I wrote this initially as a comment on the thread but it became too long for blogger's word length restriction, so I am publishing it here. I knew a little about Geoffrey Canada from past discussions and initially updated my knowledge by watching this 2008 video interview with Charlie Rose:


I also watched the Oprah Education Panel Continues the Discussion After the Show (link), featuring Geoffrey Canada and some others, which was fascinating. (The Charlie Rose interview provides a better look at Canada's overall world view and the reasons he has formed a political alliance against "big labour"; might be worth summarising in more detail at some stage)

No one raised the fundamental question which is that the problems of social class cannot be solved within a system which by its nature and day to day activity continues to generate those problems on a greater scale than any solutions within that system. Canada was not critical of government and praised Obama's "Race to the Top". Nor can such a big nation wide problem be solved by philanthropy as Tom points out, the pockets of Gates and Zuckerberg (Facebook entrepreneur who has become a recent education philanthropist) are miniscule compared to what is required nation wide. Also Canada buys into the great American empire rhetoric which is populist and misleading when it comes to solving this problem for America as a whole. His empire rhetoric is more apparent in the Charlie Rose video.

Nevertheless, Canada's analysis of educational problems for the disadvantaged and what to do about it are correct. High expectations, early intervention, build parental support into the package, longer school day, teacher accountability (even though we might argue about how to do that). This is along the same lines (progress without progressivism) of the scheme proposed and now being implemented by Noel Pearson in Cape York, Australia for the most disadvantaged Australians. Pearson is not so dependent on philanthropy because Australia differs from the USA in that respect but he has ended up allied to what is regarded as the "right" because they are more practical than "correct". That political alliance seems to go with solutions within the system too.

IMO you can't really polemicise in an all round manner (black and white, they are bad and we are good) against people who are trying to help the Disadvantaged in the here and now and at the same time describe yourself as "progressive". Because what progressives do is help the Disadvantaged. Part of the logic flowing from this is criticism of the Union, since the role of the Union is to protect working conditions. If you are working very long hours on moderate pay for the sake of the kids then that is not what Unions are on about. This part is tricky because good teachers do work long hours on moderate pay for the sake of the kids.

Davis Guggenheim, the film director of Waiting for Superman also made An Inconvenient Truth. The parallels here to me are striking. Identify a real problem but through exaggeration completely muddy the waters about a real solution on a macro level.