We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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You can tell that maths is in a bad way … You can tell that maths teaching in Britain is in a mess. How do we know? This report in the Guardian:
The report calls on the government to set up a “maths tsar” to help revamp the structure and content of the maths curriculum and also to advise ministers.
As we have said here before, when they appoint a “tsar”, it means that they have a problem, but no idea how to solve it.
Our only problem is how we are supposed to spell the damn word.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Spell it “Kaiser”.
Tsar? Czar? Fuhrer?
Oh, whatever…
Go old school: Caesar
Never mind spelling; just try to pronounce “maths tsar” without getting your tongue caught in your lower teeth.
Anne – Very good!
Anyway, whenever this “government” – if that is not too strong a term for the gang that can’t shoot straight – appoints a tsar, that means an acknowledgement that the battle has been lost. Every area of governance for which a tsar has been appointed has already failed irretrievably. The tsar, if this is not stretching the metaphor too far, is the final nail in the coffin. Reading the “New Labour” runes, that they have appointed a maths tsar means they have given up on the adequate teaching of maths in state schools.
Yeth, maths-tsar?
Well there are 2 ways to spell it as far as I know; tsar, czar, or tzar.
How’s that for being on topic?
You Brits have a bigger problem than figuring out how to spell czar (<--- like that, by the way). The first thing you need to do is figure out that "math" is singular.
Never mind spelling, One can only echo Lord Rutherford – ‘ There is only physics, all else is stamp collecting.’
The fundamental problem is – in these times, how do you say ‘Johnny, you’re stupid.’
Well you can’t, now. Sadly, maths Kaisers will have to find a formula that says ‘Johnny, you’re…’.
So one can not be optimistic. Happily, maths depends only on the top 1% of humanity, so really it doesn’t matter.
Spoons:
The Brits do mean “maths”: The Brits celebrate their diversity by recognising that there is more than one math. From what I gather, 2 + 2 does not equal 4 in some of the immigrant communities.
‘tsar’ is the correct transliteration of the Russian word.
So how many different physics do you have in the USA?
Brian, during the water crisis in California a few years ago, they stopped offering physics in the high school.