Landman… delves deeply into the history and heritage of magic and believes that it enables the world to be viewed with a fresh sense of wonder.

“We are trying to rescue magic from its worst faults – which is cheesy guys in cheesy ties with rabbits in hats!” he says. “We are interested in the deeper side of things.”

He has a special fascination for renaissance men such as Dr John Dee and Sir Isaac Newton – scientists, astronomers and mathematicians who also practised astrology and alchemy. And today, the study of magic allows for “different ways of knowing the world”, according to Dr Landman.

"Magical mysteries of visiting prof"]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/29/the-magical-professor.html/feed 0 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/28/student-sleep-problems-arent.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/28/student-sleep-problems-arent.html#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:26:04 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=178436

Coinciding with the beginning of the US school year, researchers at UCLA published a study last week showing a correlation between lack of sleep and poor academic performance. Some 500 high schoolers kept two-week diaries of their sleep habits, how well they understood and participated in classroom work, and their scores on assignments and tests. The ones who slept less did less well in school.

The headlines on this study—like the one at Smithsonian.com, where I first saw it—tout the results as evidence that you shouldn't stay up late cramming. But cramming usually is a special-occasion thing—something you do the night before a test—not a daily occurrence. This study is really about chronic sleep deprivation, habits and behaviors that happen over weeks and months. Along with several other studies that have come out in recent years, it helps build a persuasive case not against occasional cram sessions, but against academic routines that all-but require students to operate constantly on an abnormal sleep cycle.

For instance, military education—where students carry both heavy physical and mental loads—is highly regimented with a certain number of hours being alloted for sleep. In 2008, researchers from the Air Force Academy and the Naval Post Graduate School published results of a study that showed recruits who operated on a schedule that allowed for 6 hours of sleep did worse academically than peers who were given 8 hours. In fact, the recruits who got 8-hours of sleep scored an average of 11 percent higher on tests.

Another study, this one from 2011, found that sleep deprivation and sleep quality affected academic performance, independent of whether people were "good students" or "bad students" and independent of their personal lifestyle choices, like whether they partied a lot or not.

That doesn't mean partying isn't a factor at all. There have been a couple of studies that found correlations between alcohol consumption and not getting enough sleep. But the 2011 study suggests that lack of sleep isn't just a issue for wild and crazy drinkers and they aren't the only ones who suffer academically because of it.

Taken together, the evidence we have on the connection between sleep and academic performance suggests that the problem isn't merely an issue of student behavior, and the solution probably shouldn't be confined to lecturing kids on how they ought to be getting a full 8 hours of rest. It's also a systemic problem with the way we do education. Consider when high school starts, for instance. Studies in Minnesota (and elsewhere) have shown that simply shifting first period from 7:20 to 8:30 makes a difference not only in attendance, but also in how well students do once they get to school.

Read more on the Minnesota school time start studies

Psychology Today on delaying the start of the school day

I'll bet you didn't know that, in order to earn a Ph.D. from a major American university, you must first defeat a snake in combat. Don't feel too bad. They almost never mention this until you've already begun your graduate studies. Luckily, Luke Burns has a handy FAQ over at McSweeny's that will make sure you pass both your oral thesis defense and your mandatory snake fight with flying colors.

Q: Do I have to kill the snake?
A: University guidelines state that you have to “defeat” the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this. Lots of students choose to wrestle the snake. Some construct decoys and elaborate traps to confuse and then ensnare the snake. One student brought a flute and played a song to lull the snake to sleep. Then he threw the snake out a window.

Q: Does everyone fight the same snake?
A: No. You will fight one of the many snakes that are kept on campus by the facilities department.

Q: Are the snakes big?
A: We have lots of different snakes. The quality of your work determines which snake you will fight. The better your thesis is, the smaller the snake will be.

For god's sake, read the full FAQ. You do not want to arrive at your snake fight unprepared.

Last night at Santa Monica College (about 20 blocks from the beach here in Los Angeles, CA), police pepper-sprayed some 30 students in a crowd of about 150 protesters. The students want affordable education. They gathered during a meeting of the college's board of trustees to voice opposition to planned tuition hikes that would raise the cost of bread-and-butter courses during the summer session by as much as 400%. I was close enough to the location last night to hear helicopters and sirens as it happened.

The LA Times reports that Santa Monica police are today "trying to sort out" who used pepper-spray on the peacefully assembled students. Reports I heard last night indicated that the person or persons responsible were campus police, not Santa Monica police, who were called in later to secure the site. Among the injured: a child, who looks to be about 4 or 5 years old from these photos.

One student eyewitness tweeted:

Pepper sprayed a room full of students and two children. A poor lil five year old got it in the face.

— Sarah Belknap (@mary_menville) April 4, 2012

There is apparently money for 3 cop choppers, pepper spray, batons, five squad cars, 8 ambulances, but no money for education.

— Sarah Belknap (@mary_menville) April 4, 2012

More eyewitness video plus photos of two of the victims follow, at the end of this Boing Boing post.

Student blogger zunguzungu in Berkeley, who has been covering student protests and campus police brutality throughout California, rounds up news link and posts about the incident this morning. An excerpt:

I have seen no allegation that any of the students were violent or even used civil disobedience; the main problem seems to have been — in the college president’s words — that the small boardroom wasn’t able to accommodate all of the students who wanted to speak: ”We expected some students, but we didn’t expect that big of a crowd with such enthusiasm.”

When students demanded entrance to the room the meeting was being held — a tiny room, with room for only a handful of outsiders (by a great coincidence) — the police went wild.

(...) How does this happen? How does pepper spray become the act of first resort? Even the anodyne phrasing of the LA Times admits that pepper spray was used proactively (“Several were also overcome when pepper spray was released just outside the meeting room as officers tried to break up the crowd”) and not in response to some kind of clear and present danger.

Or, rather, it was. A crowd must be dispersed before it does something, goes the logic of the new preemptive policing; a crowd is, itself, a clear and present danger. If you wait until the crowd actually does something, you’ve waited too long. And so you preempt it by striking first.

If you doubt that this is the way these people think, I’d invite you to read Jeff Young — the current assistant police chief at UCLA — writing his “operational review” of UC Berkeley’s police actions against protesters from last November 9th, and note that his main takeaway was that campus police should have probably been allowed to use pepper spray. For more successful protest management, he decides, what the police need is more force options. Perhaps Tasers?

More coverage of the incident: Santa Monica Patch (who were first and best on this as it broke, notably!), KTLA, LA CBS, NBC LA, LA Times story with background on the fee hikes.

Below, photos from "Lady Libertine" on Twitter: Marioly Gomez and Jasmine Gomez, two of the students she identifies as having been pepper-sprayed and assaulted by campus police at Santa Monica College last night.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/04/04/students-protesting-tuition-hi.html/feed 148 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/a-must-read-for-college-students-and-professors.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/a-must-read-for-college-students-and-professors.html#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:29:23 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=127774 The New York Times looks at why college students leave science majors and what can be done to change that.]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/a-must-read-for-college-students-and-professors.html/feed 42