Jwill's Log

Source: boston.com
Read Article

A looming budget deficit could lead to the closing of a significant number of Boston schools over the next two years and further reductions in staff, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said yesterday.

Johnson, who is still working through the numbers with her staff, said she is making every effort to avoid closing schools for this fall, but was unsure if she could prevent it.

Budget deficits…why is that such a common trend these days? It’s unfortunate. Hopefully they can balance the budget without school closings of any sort. I trust that Superintendent Johnson will make the best decision for Boston Public Schools.

Source: New York Times
Read Article

For more than 2,500 years, mathematicians have been obsessed with solving for x. The story of their struggle to find the “roots” — the solutions — of increasingly complicated equations is one of the great epics in the history of human thought.

And yet, through it all, there’s been an irritant, a nagging little thing that won’t go away: the solutions often involve square roots of negative numbers. Such solutions were long derided as “sophistic” or “fictitious” because they seemed nonsensical on their face.

My girlfriend showed me this article – it’s a really good one and definitely a suggested read if you want a little closure about all that imaginary number stuff.

Source: boston.com
Read Article

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – Inside the front door to Central Falls High School, across the street from a boarded-up building, an archway is adorned with an unambiguous boast: “Through these halls pass the world’s best faculty and students.’’

It is a motto that rings false for the local school board, which recently voted to fire all of the school’s staff in a stunning move that made Central Falls a lightning rod in the polarizing debate over improving the country’s education system.

Painful consequences for a school that failed to perform well. Is it really everyone’s fault, though? Whose fault is it, really, when a school underperforms? Is it wholly that of the teachers? Is it wholly that of the administration? I feel like people usually point at the administration when schools perform badly, but bad teaching exists and is prevalent as well. I feel like firing an entire staff is a little drastic, though I don’t completely know the situation here. Perhaps it is necessary, though: replacing the entire staff starts the school over. It allows the superintendent to look for people who all share a similar mission and have similar goals and expectations in place for their students. A school with staff that share a common goal goes a long way toward helping students.

When downloading the new version of Google Earth, I came across this message. I don’t like when applications install background processes on your computer and when they don’t give you an option to not install it. Thankfully, if you do a little looking before you download, you come across a “Customize your installation with advanced setup” link that leads to another page with a checkbox that says “Allow Google Earth to automatically install recommended updates.” I turned that off and this dialog no longer came up with the new version. I’m sure this change officially happened a while ago, but it upsets me that most people will see this and think, “I have to install some background updater app or I can’t use this?”. It takes a little fishing to see that there actually is an option to not install it. I’d rather not have another background application.