Brian Greene, a Columbia physics professor and author of The Elegant Universe, and his wife, Tracy Day, an Emmy-winning documentary producer, gathered up the city’s Nobel laureates (and Alan Alda!) and had them put together the coolest presentations they could devise. Thus the World Science Festival was born. The festival kicks off May 28 and runs for five days. It is being held in New York City.
I wish I was able to attend this, it sounds like fun.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
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15 comments:
mein gott, have you perused the schedule of events?? what a blast the festival would be.
brian greene is one of a handful of physicists who can speak to non-physicist types successfully. his books are approachable, accessable.
so much so that my non-science minded brother in law still has my copy of the elegant universe dvd.
wish i could go, too.
i was thinking at work 2night, wouldn't it be super-cool if the world science festival toured the u.s.? if comic book conventions can thrive, why not science?
man, that'd be awesome.
oops, my geek is showing. *blushes*
Unfortunately the perfect guy to host a traveling science fair is gone now. Don Herbert, Mr Wizard, would be the ultimate science show host, I think.
yes, bob, mr wizard would've been a perfect match!
and somehow, bill nye the science guy doesn't quite meet our needs, does he? (nothing personal, bill).
i thought about ira flato (npr, science friday), or the guys from radiolab. but none of them fit completely.
maybe a science team? alan alda seems interested. ;) get a college-educated rap star, and ashton kutchner (microbiology major, can ya believe it?!), and maybe leonard nimoy (or not), and who knows? it just might fly.
sorry to jump topics, but are y'all aware of this?
i can't even think straight, it makes me so mad. >:-[ !!
.......*wordless with astonishment*
Well, there is a kindergarten teacher who should (will?) be out of a job. What a horrible thing to do to a child.
That said, there are better approaches to schooling special needs children than putting them in with the mainstream children . . . thank you no child left behind.
at the risk of sounding know-it-all-ish, i would like to say that a large percentage of folks with asperger's syndrome are actually placed in the gifted and talented classes instead of special ed.
more than most, aspies' need functioning social models as peers. special ed students, for all their abilities, simply aren't functional socially. if you group aspies with non-functioners, the aspies can only imitate non-functioners.
(p.s. you do recall that i am most likely an aspie, don'cha?)
Didn't mean to lump "special needs" with "special ed"...
I think there are many children who need special attention, whether it be because of learning disabilities, that they belong in G+T programs, etc. etc. Not every child should be in the same class with the "majority", both for the benefit of the "majority" and the "other" children.
agreed.
sorry if i started to react defensively. that story had me worked up a bit.
you make valid points that i couldn't possibly argue with.
You also get a little insight into the mom, bringing up Al Qaeda. Almost think she had a second agenda.
The teacher was wrong. She handled it in an extremely improper way. Nothing about the boy's behavior was brought up, but I can only imagine it had a disruptive aspect to it and it was obviously bad enough to have spurred the odious vote. Nonetheless, the teacher brought herself down to the level of the children when an adult was needed. Very sad.
This is another reason education should be handled in the most local level, so that children can be placed in the most appropriate educational situation by the people closest to the situation, the parents and the teachers.
I don't know that "local" solves it, Bawdy. In this case, things seemed to have been handled pretty damn locally (at the classroom level) and that didn't work out so well. Sometimes guidelines (rules?) are needed at a higher level, whether it be state or national rules, well, ...
csm,
You brought up "no child left behind". Just because problems happen at the local level, and they always will, doesn't mean the federal government needs to stick their noses into it. Some states and localities will do well with education and some will not. The ones which do not should be called out by the press. The press should educate the parents, teachers and administrators of the crappy localities as to what the good localities are doing right which would promote the changes which would need to be made to get the bad localities on the right track. The feds don't need to get involved, not that they were in this case, but generally. That is my point which you should know by now, I will take any and every opportunity to expound on.
Agreed, Bawdy. Just saying that local versus national (or, indeed, national versus local) is not the issue. I think No Child Left Behind is a bad law. And, of course, I can envision good laws at the national level to take its place.
getting back to the fair...
here's brian greene on the colbert report.
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