The Secular Problem of Evil
James Paul Gee, Weblog, March 31, 2014

James Paul Gee looks at the problem of evil from a secular perspective and comes up with the old Taoist maxim that life in the balance is the recipe for good. "Cooperation on a large scale—that is, any sort that could lead to cultures, institutions, cities, and states—requires solving what I will call 'hard continua problems'.  These are problems where too much of something is bad and too little of it is bad, but finding the 'middle-ground' is hard." But this isn't the answer to the question of why there is evil - it's the answer (or an answer) to the question of why it's so hard to eradicate. But if he wants the answer to the deep question, it's this (also, I would say, found in ancient Taoist texts): good and evil are something we create. The world is neither inherently good nor evil, but as soon as we begin to describe it, we begin dividing according to our perceptions, tastes, and objectives and needs. And hence we create out of natural events the classification of 'good' and 'evil'. And, over time, it becomes something we recognize, more like a feeling than like a law.

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Open Access Research
Adam Cooper, Cetis Blogs, March 31, 2014

Adam Cooper reports: "Last week was a significant one for UK academics and those interested in accessing scholarship; the funding councils announced a new policy mandating open access for the post-2014 research evaluation exercises. In the same week, Cetis added its name to the list of members of the Open Policy Network, (strap-line, 'ensuring open access to publicly funded resources')." One day, maybe my employer will adopt the same policy.

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Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Experts or Amateurs? Gauging Young Canadians’ Digital Literacy Skills
Valerie Steeves, MediaSmarts, March 31, 2014

As we suspected: "Canadian youth are not as digitally literate as adults may think they are, according to new research released today by MediaSmarts. Though today’s young people have grown up immersed in digital media, they still rely on parents and teachers to help them advance their skills in areas such as searching and verifying online information." 64 page PDF.

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Canadian Researchers’ Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours: A Phase 5 Report
Press Release, Canadian Science Publishing, March 31, 2014

This survey released by Canadian Science Publishing suggests that for scientists "open access was 8 times less important than impact factor and 13 times less important than journal reputation when selecting a journal." These results aren't surprising whn you consider that "The sample for this survey was drawn from two databases maintained by Thomson Reuters: BIOSIS and Web of Science." Even so, if you read the survey itself (36 page PDF) you find significant and growing support for open access publishing (interestingly, Canadian Science Publishing is what became of the NRC Press after it was privatized a few years ago; it has adopted a form of author-pay open access publishing).

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NL government to reduce student debt burden by replacing all student loans with grants
Press Release, Canadian Federation of Students, March 31, 2014

The story is in the headline. The Newfoundland government is also freezing tuition. It's rare enough in Canada to be worth highlighting here (by contrast, I lived in oil-rich Alberta for 17 years, faced nothing but rising tuition rates and accumulated $25K in student debt it took me decades to repay). More, via Academica: Budget, Budget Highlights, CBC News.

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Tales of the Undead…Learning Theories: The Learning Pyramid
Candice Benjes-Small, ACRLog, March 30, 2014

It's worth re-running this item (shared this week by Doug Belshaw). "Since the 1960s, experts have been trying to convince people that the learning pyramid is bogus. But for every article written exposing its weaknesses, there seem to be dozens of instances where it is invoked as truth in presentations, websites, and trade publications." If you want proof someone hasn't done real research, watch for the cone of experience to show up in their work.

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Crows Understand a Fundamental Part of Logical Reasoning
Jason G. Goldman, Animals, March 30, 2014

David Hume wrote, "It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants — nay infants, nay even brute beasts — improve by experience, and learn the qualities of natural objects, by observing the effects which result from them." We see this over and over again; this link adds to that evidence, as we see crows using heavy objects to raise the level if water in a glass in order to reach food floating in it. Whatever theory of learning we have, it seems ervident that it must be simple enough that children and animals can use it, and this seems to me to rule out theories requiring complex constructivism or the making of meaning. Because crows don't make meaning.

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