Albert Einstein and the Hidden Menace of the November Election

A couple of weeks ago we brought Nikola Tesla back from the dead to answer some questions about the iPhone 7. This time, we’re bringing the ghost of Albert Einstein back to help us out because we’ve become very stupid and we could use some help.

Great Britain and the Queen

Let’s get one thing straight, right off the bat. In case you were wondering, the Queen has NOT asked us to write in her name on November’s Ballot and restore British Rule. It’s in Snopes. Although the Brits are happy that we’ve become so silly that it might distract the world from Brexit.

On Having Only Two Choices

Since Einstein is here for only a short amount of time, let’s ask him what he thinks.

Us: So, do you mind if we call you Al?

Einstein: Please, go right ahead.

Us: Do you think we might need other choices for this president?

Al: As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.

Us: We thought so, too.

He Who Must Not Be Named

Us: So, Al, do you think that the Republican candidate is a little bit like He Who Must Not Be Named from Harry Potter?

Al: Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

Us: We’re putting you down as a yes.

Al: Ok.

The Future of Education

Us: So, Al, If He Who Must Not Be Named wins the election, does that mean that any and all education is doomed?

Al: The aim of education must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life problem.

The Unnamed One and Twitter

If He Who Must Not Be Named uses Twitter for his rants, does that mean that Twitter is somehow diminished?

Al: “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Us: Ok, but did you see Jon Stewart turn his Twitter rant with him into a stand-up routine?

Al: That was funny.

Us: So we should vote wisely this November?

Al: Ayup.

How Should We Vote, Then?

Us: So, any advice on how we should vote in the election?

Al: A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

Us: Are you saying “Don’t worry, be happy?”

Al: Never underestimate the stupidity of the American electorate.

Us: Gotcha.

There You Have it!

If the smartest man, er–ghost, ever can’t sway your vote, who can? Leave me a comment about the election and how you’re managing to stay sane.

More games: friv

Man in Albert Einstein mask attempts ATM theft

VAN ALSTYNE, Texas -- Police want to talk to a man wearing an Albert Einstein mask who tried to break into an ATM machine.

It happened early Sunday morning outside the Independent Bank off FM 121.

Police say the masked man walked up to the ATM with some kind of tank and a hose. Investigators know he wanted money but they're not sure about his method.

"We don't know what he was trying to do with the container, maybe use pressurized air or a flammable material to get in there?," Police Chief Tim Barnes said. "It didn't work for him."

Officers say the man couldn't get the machine open and he left without any money. Police believe the man had an accomplice and possibly a get away car.

"There is some indication that he wasn't working alone," Barnes said. "Some of the things he had with him, we feel that there are maybe two or three other people involved."

The man will face burglary and criminal mischief charges, if he is caught. Police say he caused $2,500 worth of damage to the ATM machine.

If you know anything about this crime, contact Van Alstyne police.

Montefiore Group, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center land $3 million for HIV prevention

The hospitals aim to reduce HIV infections by increasing use of pre-exposure prophylaxis in region with one of the highest HIV Rates in the nation.

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded $3 million to researchers at Montefiore Medical Group, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center in an effort to curb HIV rates in the Bronx, a borough in New York with one of the highest HIV rates in the country.

The work calls for increasing the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medication that reduces the risk of contracting HIV, by integrating PrEP into Montefiore primary care practices throughout the Bronx.

"Primary care providers are essential to ending the AIDS epidemic because they regularly reach people before they are infected," Laurie Bauman, co-principal investigator on the study and director of the Preventive Intervention Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said in a statement. "Our goal is to address reservations providers might have about prescribing PrEP, which include their own lack of training and their concerns about patient adherence."

The selection of Montefiore Medical Group's Federally Qualified Health Centers for the initiative puts the spotlight on Montefiore's expertise in developing models for treating diseases on a population basis, and its continuing collaboration with the New York City government to end the AIDS epidemic.

The randomized trial will involve six Montefiore Medical Group FQHCs. Three will receive the intervention, which will address diverse barriers to PrEP.

The work will include developing a PrEP Eligibility Tool to help providers identify high-risk individuals who might be eligible for PrEP. Also, the program encourages providers to use the electronic medical record to screen, prescribe, monitor and communicate with patients and other clinicians about PrEP.

To evaluate the intervention, in fact, researchers will use electronic health record data to track the number of people screened and new PrEP prescriptions. They will also assess the effectiveness of each intervention component with qualitative studies of providers and patients who both embraced and opted not to initiate PrEP.

Vote Leave Campaign Uses Tactics of Climate Change ‘Sceptics’

With British voters heading to the ballot box on 23 June to decide on a referendum about whether the UK should remain within the European Union or not, it is striking that the Vote Leave campaign has used the same tactics to deny the economic dangers of Brexit as lobbyists who refute the risks of climate change.

A ComRes opinion poll released on 16 June showed that 18 per cent of people who intended to vote to leave also disagreed with the statement that “human activity is causing climate change”, compared with 10 per cent of those planning to vote to remain. As a report on the survey in The Guardian pointed out, this is perhaps not surprising given the views of the leaders of the Vote Leave campaign.

Michael Gove, Co-Convenor of the Vote Leave campaign, has attracted sharp criticism after telling a television interviewer “I think people in this country have had enough of experts”. And this week he compared the actions of economists who have warned of the impacts of the UK leaving the European Union with the Nazi smear campaign against Albert Einstein. Mr Gove was encouraging people to turn a blind eye to the assessments of not just Her Majesty’s Treasury, but also those ofindependent experts, such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

However, Mr Gove also has a history of being muddled about climate change risks. As Education Secretary, he tried unsuccessfully to have the topic removed from the National Curriculum, arguing that it was too “contemporary”. Alongside Mr Gove on the Vote Leave Campaign Committee is Lord Lawson, who set up the Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009 to lobby against policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. His most infamous comments on climate change risks include an attempt to blame French families for thousands of deaths during a European heatwave in 2003, the hottest since at least 1500, which scientists have concluded was made more likely by global warming. In his 2008 book An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, Lord Lawson wrote:

“As it happens, I spent the summer of 2003 in south-west France myself, and found it perfectly tolerable, but it was clearly a hardship for some. It is the custom in France for every family to go away on holiday during the first fortnight in August, leaving behind, to fend for themselves, those family members who are too old to travel. In August 2003, this proved to be a problem (the number of staff at old people’s homes who had gone on holiday at the same time did not help, either).”

Lord Lawson not only rejects the scientific evidence for the risks of climate change, but he often attacks the scientists who are responsible for carrying out research on the potential consequences of rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

In his 2006 pamphlet for the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing lobby group, Lord Lawson compared concerns about climate change risks with Islamic fundamentalism, stating that “the new priests are scientists (well rewarded with research grants for their pains) rather than clerics of the established religions, and the new religion is eco-fundamentalism”.

More recently, during the 2013-14 UK floods, caused by the wettest winter on record, Lord Lawson denied any link to climate change, rebutting the “absurd statement” of the Chief Scientist of the Met Office, who he described as “this Julia Slingo woman”.

The tactic of attempting to smear dissenting experts has been adopted by the Vote Leave campaign against economists who speak out about the risks of Brexit. Last month, Vote Leave tried to undermine a new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies by calling it a “paid-up propaganda arm of the European Commission”.

But it is not only Lord Lawson among the Vote Leave campaign who exhibits a disregard for evidence and experts. One of its Board members is Graham Stringer MP, who recently became a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Mr Stringer has not been as vocal about his ‘scepticism’ of climate change risks, but he has promoted an unwillingness to accept medical evidence for the existence of dyslexia.

Another key member of the Vote Leave campaign who has flirted with climate change denial is Boris Johnson. He showed on more than one occasion while he was the Mayor of London that he is sympathetic to the discredited claims of climate change ‘sceptics’. And he also demonstrated a hostility towards scientific evidence revealing how much of a problem air pollution is in London, even though it caused tens of thousands of premature deaths during his eight years in charge of the capital.

This disdain for expert organisations and individuals that undermine flawed arguments is a key characteristic of those who are climate change and European Union ‘sceptics’. It means that scientists who warn of the risks of climate change and economists who warn of the risks of Brexit are simply dismissed as “alarmists”.

So if the Vote Leave campaign prevails on 23 June, it may not only be the end of the UK’s membership of the European Union. It may also mark the end of enlightened decision-making, based on expertise and evidence, in English politics.

Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Is Testing Creating a Toxic Culture in Schools?

Albert Einstein purportedly said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Sometimes I wonder if the standardized testing we do in many of our schools today does just that: judges fish on their climbing ability. Many assessments evaluate unnecessary academic skills that have no basis in determining if a child is ready to move on to the next level of learning.

Teaching Fish to Climb Trees

A recent conversation with my friend Teresa*, a former teacher, drove home the frustrations many devoted educators feel towards testing regimes that lack nuance and context. Poignantly, she described how she worked day-in and day-out to teach her 3rd grade class of English Language Learners to read while she was simultaneously and consistently being compared to her counterpart who was leading a class of 3rd grade native English speakers.

It didn’t matter that Teresa had brought her students’ reading ability up from a kindergarten level at the beginning of the school year to a 2nd grade level at the end of the school year — she was still behind: both in absolute terms (based on state standards) and in relative terms (vs. her third grade teacher counterpart).

At the end of the year, Teresa became part of a RIF (Reduction in Force). This required her to move schools due to a lack of funding at her current school. After several years of such moves, she left the profession.

Teresa summed up her decision to leave the teaching profession this way, “It’s one thing to be paid one of the lowest professional salaries in America; it’s completely untenable to be paid at that level and also disrespected.”

Mothers Against Drunk Testing

Teresa is clearly not alone in her feelings toward our standardized tests and their unintended consequences for both students and teachers. When it comes to end-of-year statewide tests, there is a growing opt-out movement forming, and “assessment“ is quickly becoming a bad word in academic circles. There is even an advocacy group now called Mothers Against Drunk Testing.

But in this opt-out movement, are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Does the concept of assessment have merit, but the implementation lack credibility?

For example, if assessments could be used less as a stick to punish the less “successful” and more as a guide to ensure that both students and teachers get the support and resources they need, would we look at tests differently?

Formative vs. Summative Assessments

Herein lies the difference between formative assessments and summative assessments. Formative assessments occur as a precursor to the personalization, instruction, and customization of a student’s learning plan and teacher’s lesson plan. Formative assessments guide. Summative assessments, such as the standardized testing we’re more familiar with, merely summarize.

At Istation, the edtech company where I work, we provide digital and face-to-face personalized learning experiences for students in the subjects of reading, Spanish and math. We recognize the importance of standards in an educational setting and provide teachers with the kind of rigorous curriculum that the standards demand.

Istation’s progress-monitoring tools are designed to save teachers time and to pinpoint the personal needs of each student. Those same progress monitors can of course also be used to measure growth over an academic cycle or a multi-year period. Importantly, the individual assessment technology embedded in Istation and similar programs is dynamic and part of the curriculum; this is fundamental as it ensures students’ progress is measured while they are engaged in the actual learning process.

Many parents are concerned about the frequency of testing and the time it takes away from classroom instruction. But modern formative testing does not require sacrificing a morning to scantrons and number 2 pencils. Adaptive technology allows measurement and instruction to occur simultaneously and reinforce each other as programs dynamically adjust to each student’s strengths and areas for improvement.

One of the most important components of strong formative assessments is that they show growth (or lack thereof) over time for all students. Put differently, formative testing measures not only how a student performs compared to an average but also how that student performs compared to herself in prior periods. Istation’s screeners are particularly telling, because they show the risk-level of failure associated with each child and recommend how intensive instruction should or should not be.

A Brighter Future

In listening to Teresa’s heart-breaking stories, I was reminded that unfair evaluations (in any circumstance) can lead to toxic cultures and eventually exits from a profession or a career path.

Instead of simply measuring a student’s performance at a single point in time, let’s put greater emphasis on progress over time. End-of-grade assessments do have their place, but there is even greater value in incorporating progress-monitoring tools and formative assessments: they allow us to measure growth over time and give teachers necessary insight to intervene appropriately.

In short, if we want to keep talented professionals and students engaged in our educational system, we need to do a better job of assessing our own assessments. Gains in classroom technology mean that schools are no longer limited to tests designed to determine whether every student meets a minimum standard once a year. We can also measure the individual progress each student makes in a dynamic and non-obtrusive way throughout the year.

Albert Einstein: 15 Interesting Facts You Didn’t Know

Albert Einstein is known as one of the most brilliant people our world has ever seen. Despite the fact that he was not properly recognized in his time, since then his life has been highly scrutinized. However, there are still some facts that most people don’t know about him. With that in mind, here we present our list of 15 facts you probably didn’t know about Albert Einstein.

Number Fifteen: His Name Is an Anagram

The name “Albert Einstein” can actually be taken apart and reconstructed as “Ten Elite Brains.” This is shockingly coincidental since Einstein probably had the intelligence of 10 people – at least.

Number Fourteen: His Parents Were Concerned About His Mental Prowess

Einstein was not very vocal as a child, and in fact, he rarely spoke. Even worse, when he did speak, he spoke at an extremely slow pace relative to his peers. He behaved this way until he was nine years old.

Number Thirteen: He Was a Ladies’ Man

Einstein was married, but he was quite the philanderer while he was married. A series of letters were released by Hebrew University that detailed at least six women Einstein saw while he was married.

Number Twelve: Albert Einstein Was Religious

Despite his scientific upbringing and career, Einstein actually believed in God. Well, specifically, he believed in something larger than himself. He said, “A spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way, the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort.”

Number Eleven: He Was Driven to Science by a Compass

When Einstein was just five years old, his father gave him a compass as a gift. Einstein did not fully understand how the compass worked, and so his curiosity eventually led him to pursue science as a career.

Number Ten: He Could Have Been a Professional Musician

If Einstein were not a physicist, he could have been playing violin professionally! He admitted that he often thought in music, and he lived his daydreams in music as well.

Number Nine: He Was Not a Nice Husband

Einstein’s first wife, Mileva, had a contract with him. There were several “conditions” for their marriage, including the fact that she had to wash and clean his clothes, cook every single meal for him, and keep his room clean.

Number Eight: He Valued Creativity Over Knowledge

Einstein is famous for valuing his imagination more than actual knowledge. He said, “Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Number Seven: He Was Not a Very Good Father

We mentioned that Einstein was a pretty terrible husband in part one of this list, but he was also a bad father. His oldest son was named Hans Albert, and he became very angry with Einstein after Einstein refused to take care of Hans Albert’s mother after they got divorced. Einstein did not leave very much for his son after he died.

Number Six: His Brain Traveled the World

After he died, Einstein’s son allowed for pieces of his brain to be sent to labs to be studied. It was found that he has more glial cells than the average person, which may have allowed him to synthesize information in a unique way.

Number Five: He Encouraged the Atom Bomb

It’s true. Einstein may have been a pacifist, but he actually encouraged president Roosevelt to continue with the Manhattan Project.

Number Four: He Loved to Sail, But…

Though Einstein was passionate about sailing and loved going out on his boat, he was actually quite terrible at it. His neighbors in Long Island would often have to travel out to rescue him because he capsized his boat so frequently.

Number Three: The Theory of Relativity Began in His Head

Einstein liked to perform thought experiments in his own head. One of these experiments involved him riding next to a beam of light at the speed of light. He began wondering if, while riding at the same speed as light next to a beam of light, that beam of light would look stationary. That question eventually was realized as the theory of relativity.

Number Two: He Slept With His Cousin

Einstein’s second wife was named Elsa. And she was actually his second cousin.

Number One: He Was Almost a President

In 1952, Israel’s president, Chaim Weizmann, died. Einstein was asked to become the next president, but he turned the offer down.

New Science Tells Us That Men In Politics Are Blowhards

A couple of researchers in Switzerland wanted to judge how confident students in different career paths were. First, they split them into groups of 12 and gave each a short test:

1. In which year was the Nobel Prize in physics awarded to Albert Einstein?
2. In which year was pope John Paul I (the direct predecessor of John Paul II) elected Pope?
3. In which year did the reactor accident happen in Chernobyl?
4. In which year was Elvis Presley born?
5. In which year did the first flight with the supersonic jet Concorde take place?

The answers are 1921, 1978, 1986, 1935, and 1976. My guesses were 1920, 1979, 1986, 1940,¹ and 1973, so I was off by a total of 10 years. How do I think this compared with the rest of my group? I'm going to say I was third best. If it turns out that I was, in fact, only fifth best, I was overconfident by two ranks.

So how did everyone do? The first answer is simple: as you'd expect, men were vastly overconfident in their results and women were vastly underconfident. The chart on the right shows the second answer: political scientists were way overconfident and humanities students were way underconfident. Buck up, history majors! You know more than the budding politicians even if they're oh-so-sure they know everything.

Bottom line: Science™ says that men in politics are blowhards. Ignore them. Women with English degrees know more than they think. Listen to them. That is all.

¹This means that Elvis was drafted into the army at age 23. Doesn't that seem a little late?