psychology dector

David Simon , creator and writer of The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008) and Treme (HBO, 2010-2013) , author of the nonfiction crime classics, Homicide:   A Year on the Killing Streets (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) and The Corner:  A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (Broadway, 1997), and former reporter for the Baltimore Sun , can now add cultural critic and riveting public speaker to his resume, although I would argue that his work has always involved sharp and barbed cultural criticism whether in television fiction or in signed pieces of simmering nonfictional journalism.   In every case, in every word, he is a force of nature. My love for his work led me to his blog, The Audacity of Despair , a perverse reworking of Barack Obama’s 2008 memoir and political wax job.   The subtitle is “prose, links and occasional venting,” which about sums up the content.   Simon’s writing is piquant and cutting at times, but he also does a good job, better than most write...

From: http://www.tustin.k12.ca.us/cms/lib02/CA01001904/Centricity/Domain/1831/ccss.jpg It is, admittedly, a hyperbolic title. If you are looking for answers to Iran’s nuclear development, the war in Afghanistan, or what exactly happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, you won’t find them here. This post deals with the growing controversy over Common Core Standards , the voluminous and quite frankly confusing bureaucratic boondoggle supported by the Obama administration and Bill Gates, that allegedly will impose benchmarks equaling a national standard of achievement in American schools.   Republicans, especially the Tea Party nut jobs, hate Common Core because they fear the federal government is taking over classrooms and forcing teachers to teach—gulp!— liberal ideas .   However, there are Republicans, and Democrats who liked the standards and even voted for them initially.   Now that people realize Common Core will cost states billions to implement, everybody has be...

This blog post explains how the index works that Array.prototype.reduce() passes to its callback. What indices does the callback receive? Tobie Langel recently pointed out something about Array.prototype.reduce() that looks odd at first glance (slightly edited by me): > var a = [ 'a', 'b', 'c' ]; > a.reduce(function(x, y, i) { console.log(i) }); 1 2 > a.reduce(function(x, y, i) { console.log(i) }, 0); 0 1 2 It does make sense if you look at the signature of the reduce() callback: function (previousValue, currentElement, currentIndex, array) Therefore, what is logged in the example is the index of y . reduce() and empty arrays What also suprised me about reduce() is that you can only use it for empty arrays if you provide an initial value (like the second variant above). That value becomes the first previousValue that the callback is invoked with. > function add(prev, cur) { return prev + cur } undefin...

Photo courtesy of Reuters Last night, while speaking with someone who spent some time in the aviation industry, I was startled to hear the beginnings of a new conspiracy theory regarding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 . My source told me that the only thing that could have so obliterated the Boeing 777 was a bomb.   She also revealed that over the last few days, she had contacted a former colleague who now worked for another airline, and this woman refused to say much over the phone, except to caution that all phone calls were being monitored.   They had been told not to discuss the disappearance of flight MH370. In and of themselves, these two pieces of anecdotal evidence are not earth-shattering revelations.   The fact that search crews have found no wreckage could mean that the pieces are very small and scattered widely over a huge swath of ocean.   Or, it could indicate the search is in disarray , as The New York Times is reporting today. A...

The College Board has their spin doctors on call and ready to tell us a story.   But the fairy tale makes them out to be the white knights coming to the aid of over-stressed, financially strapped students.   What a crock! Beginning in 2016, the SAT will have only an optional writing prompt that will be graded separately from the main test.   This reverses changes made in 2005 when colleges, spearheaded by the University of California system, threatened to stop making the exam mandatory for incoming freshmen and in some cases, abolishing altogether any requirements to take the exam.   In a panic, the College Board revamped the SAT, adding a writing portion (and an additional 800 points) to go with the traditional verbal and math portions for a grand total of 2400 points possible.   With the latest changes, the exam will revert to the old 1600 perfect score. Where the bull really starts flying is in the statements by the College Board publicity machine.   ...