Why did David Coleman and company keep choosing “synthesis” as the word to best represent the new SAT? Argh.

If you’re unfamiliar with David Coleman, he’s one of the architects of the Common Core standards — and now he’s the guy who led the re-shaping/re-branding of the SAT. Here are the basics of the new test: back to 1600… Continue Reading

Did you know 89 billion business e-mails are sent in a given day? (Smashes face into desk.)

Look at that info-graphic and just weep. 89 billion business e-mails are sent per day. That’s a whole lot of “Got it, thx” or “Need that ASAP, plz.” Think about this: in 1995 or so, business e-mail wasn’t even a norm. Now… Continue Reading

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2014 Elections Trend: Anti-incumbent attitudes are near a record high, but there’s very few toss-up races. Why?

Check out the chart above and some of the charts herein, and you could argue that the 2014 midterms have the highest anti-incumbent polling stance in about 22-24 years — seems like 68 percent of those polled are saying they want to… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: what percentage of conversation in a given day is transactional/small talk?

Last night I was in this class, and there were eight full-time faculty members in the class to evaluate some presentations we had done, and prior to the class actually commencing there was pizza and much merriment (and some nerves… Continue Reading

Fun with labor, maps, and statistics: if you want to find a job, move to North Dakota, Nebraska, or Dallas

I love data on jobs and job searching, probably because my own life is a wreck with that stuff right now. I started out looking at unemployment rate by state — to a coastal-bias person, it would seem crazy that the… Continue Reading

If you interview inmates about their decision-making when they were younger, what can you learn?

That’s the idea behind a photo exhibit from Trent Bell (there’s an accompanying video embedded above). Only 12 men volunteered for Bell’s project, which came about when one of his good friends was sentenced to 36 years in jail — and… Continue Reading

72 percent of the Earth is covered by ocean. So desalination seems like a logical answer to drought, right? Not so fast.

California droughts right now might be the worst in 100 years, and Lake Mead’s at a fairly dangerous level (which threatens tourism mecca Las Vegas), so clearly we’re moving to the “answers” stage of our water problem. It would seem… Continue Reading

I-81 runs 855 miles from Knoxville to Canada. But one 1.4-mile stretch in Syracuse, NY could be a window to the future.

Fun fact: Dwight Eisenhower’s vision for the interstate system actually came from some roads he saw in Germany while a general. Communication lines got a bit crossed, though, and he didn’t actually realize interstates would run through cities until a few years… Continue Reading