One More U.S. Advantage is Eroding

America has always prided itself on having the finest universities in the world. Of course, that reputation is built almost completely on their research, not the quality of education provided, especially to undergraduates. Indeed, as I've documented in previous posts and articles, the quality of teaching is, on average, abominable, and the feeble student growth is evidence of that.

I recently bought two audio courses offered by The Teaching Company, which claims to comb America's most prestigious universities to find its very finest instructors. Both courses were horrible. The first was on Beethoven sonatas. The course leeched the life out of every note. Each bar was intellectually analyzed until all pleasure had been excised. In the course on argumentation, the instructor attempted to reduce argumentation to an elaborate model of principles, which I am certain will not improve my argumentation skills, nor could I imagine they'd improve anyone else's, certainly not enough to justify the 12 hours of listening time.

At the same time as American universities continue their atavistic, abstruse ways, Chinese, Indian, and other Asian universities are improving, balancing their traditional emphasis on students mastering copious material and acquiring high-level skills with a new focus on enhancing students' creativity and problem solving ability. Those improved Asian universities will both better educate their already capable, hard-working people, and encourage their best and brightest to not come to the U.S but to stay in their homeland. Meanwhile a new study reported in USA Today finds the number of American students taking classes abroad has tripled in the last decade.

The U.S. desperately needs to convert most of its universities from arcana research factories to undergraduate-centered colleges in which immersive simulations and not lectures are the norm, in which courses' primary goal is to improve students' reasoning, writing, speaking, and mathematical reasoning skills, and in which faculty is hired and promoted based on how well they can educate and inspire, not how many useless, self-indulgent, often outre research articles they can crank out.

Martynemko.com Named to "Best of the Best" List

I'm pleased that my site www.martynemko.com (which includes this blog) has just been named one of Alltop's Best of the Best.

You'll find Alltop useful in finding good sites in all sorts of categories, ranging from ADHD to Yoga.

A Hidden Key to Success

Standard advice usually omits this key to success: be enjoyable to be around. Whether you're an employee or self-employed, people prefer to work with people who make their life more pleasant. They'll often prefer such a person to a more competent one.

So, yes, be as competent as possible, but recognize that you pay a price every time you're high-maintenance, too intense, demeaning, etc., and you gain brownie points every time you make co-workers, bosses, or customers' lives more pleasant: getting a project done without bugging them, not making too many requests, complimenting them, giving them credit, inserting a bit of humor to break the tension in a meeting, etc.

The Smartest Vice-Presidential Picks?

If someone asked me (no one has,) these would be my recommendations to Obama and McCain for the strongest VP candidate:

Obama should choose Hillary:

• While she has strong negatives, she has many more passionate supporters, especially among women, including many who otherwise might not vote. The larger Obama's victory, the more he can claim a mandate for what will be a very liberal agenda, so having her on the ticket will greatly empower his presidency.
  
• I think the argument against her that America isn't ready for a Black president and a women vice-president is wrong. I think America really wants to show how not racist and sexist it is, so that ticket would yield, in my opinion, a win of unprecedented size.
  

• Most important, Hillary is smart, driven, ruthless, and an effective politician--that's an unbeatable combination in a politician.
  

I do think Obama will need to allow, indeed encourage her to be a new style of vice president: with a far more active role than traditional vice presidents. But both Clinton/Gore and Bush/Cheney have set precedent for that.

McCain should also choose Hillary:

• Right now, it appears he's dead in the water. He needs a bold VP pick, and for the reasons above, Hillary seems like the best shot.
  
• In addition, the country (thanks to the ever more baldly liberal-biased media and colleges,) is moving the country leftward, so McCain needs a leftist running mate if he's to have any chance of winning.
  
• Of course, McCain and Clinton would argue like hell in the Oval Office, but that's okay: Often the best ideas derive from a clash between two differing titans. (Alas, McCain is no titan now, if he ever was one.)

Are Google and Wikipedia Searches Liberal-Biased?

Over the past months, I've found it ever more difficult to dig up conservative material using Google (both its web and news searches.) For example, today, I tried to find reporting on Senator James Inhofe's testimony before the Senate Committee on Public Works and the Environment on the current state of global warming science. Nothing there, other than a bit of polemical Inhofe bashing. I had to go to the Senate's website to find his testimony. (I've copied it into an earlier blog post today.)

I'm wondering if Google has set its search algorithm to censor or downgrade the score of conservative publications. I'm not the only worrier: former Reagan advisor and CNBC host Larry Kudlow has wondered about the same thing.

If Google is making it harder to find conservative thought, that is very troubling. Already, our other major sources of information: the schools, the colleges and the media have a decidedly liberal bias.

Wikipedia too seems to have a liberal bias. (FYI, it's the world's largest encyclopedia and the 9th most visited site on the Net.) That bias is particularly strong on racial issues. If additionally, Google searches are liberal-biased, we'll all be hearing overwhelmingly liberal thought.

And while I'm far from an across-the-board conservative, I do not believe that all wisdom resides left of center, and do believe that society is best served by facilitating open access to the full range of responsibly held ideas.

Are you perceiving a liberal or conservative bias in Google searches or in Wikipedia entries?

Getting Motivated

Here's a list of ideas that I derived from one of today's career counseling sessions. I've written about most of these ideas before, but feel it might be useful for you if I list them here:

• Figure out how you can make each task as fun as possible.
• Break the task down into little bites and feel good when you get a bite done.
• Don't be perfectionistic. That way, tasks will be less painful to do.
• Do a crappy first version. It's easier to revise your way into excellence than to come up with it out of thin air.
• When you reach a hard part, don't struggle long with it. Usually, if you can't make progress within 15-60 seconds, chances are you won't make enough progress to justify taking any more time on it. Go on, maybe come back to it later, or get help with it.
• Feel grateful for your situation. Instead of resenting having to work, adopt the approach so common among the World War II generation: Accept that you have to work, no questions asked: You have an almost a spiritual obligation to not be a parasite on the world, and more positively, to use your abilities and training to make the world better, even if it's just to dig a drainage ditch.
  

A Conjugal Visit

This is totally off-topic for my blog but listen to this: The Conjugal Visit (Warning: It is very sexually explicit.) Do NOT read the rest of this blog post until you've listened to it.

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When I first heard it, I thought it was a recording of a real conversation between a prison switchboard operator and a caller. (Call me stupid, what can I say?) I found it very entertaining. Then I found out that it is a comedy routine by Wanda Sykes, a four-time Emmy-award winning writer and comedian. Now knowing it is a comedy routine, when I listen to it again, it seems less funny, which is why I wanted you to listen to it without knowing what it is--in case you're as stupid as I am.

A question for you: Do think it's racist of me to post this comedy routine? I decided to post it because, while it does reinforce a racial stereotype, many of our most admired comedians use their their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation as the basis for their comedy routines.