watching our students, to the finest detail...

Big Brother on Campus:

Does the federal government need to know whether you aced Aristotelian ethics but had to repeat introductory biology? Does it need to know your family's financial profile, how much aid you received and whether you took off a semester to help out at home?

The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education thinks so. In its first draft report, released in late June, the commission called for creation of a tracking system to collect sensitive information about our nation's college students. Its second draft, made public last week, softens the name of the plan, but the essence of the proposal remains unchanged.

Whether you call it a "national unit records database" (the first name) or a "consumer-friendly information database" (the second), it is in fact a mandatory federal registry of all American students throughout their collegiate careers -- every course, every step, every misstep. Once established, it could easily be linked to existing K-12 and workforce databases to create unprecedented cradle-to-grave tracking of American citizens. All under the watchful eye of the federal government.

The main problem with these surveys (besides the complete and utter lack of evidence that such knowledge is actually in any way useful for future students, much less those who give up their privacy for it) is their need to maintain uniqueness and associativity - if student 1 does X and student 1 has Y, those features for correlation purposes need to be associated with the same student - and the easiest though certainly not the best way to do this is to just associate it all with the SSN.  This of course means that such information follows the student once they're out of school.  THAT is a problem.  A huge one.  And as the author notes, an illegal one.  The SSN (in spite of what half the states and 3/4ths of the universities have done) is NOT meant to be used as the ultimate ID number, and the ACLU would have an easy time throwing this out out in the courts if they ever tried it.

But as i said, the first problem is that there is no proof at all that such detailed personal information in the hands of ANY government official will actually lead to any substantial improvement in policy.

Its Big Brother in its fullest - control over YOU for no other reason than the technology enables it.

on "academic freedom"

Conspiracy Theories 101 - New York Times:

All you have to do is remember that academic freedom is just that: the freedom to do an academic job without external interference. It is not the freedom to do other jobs, jobs you are neither trained for nor paid to perform. While there should be no restrictions on what can be taught — no list of interdicted ideas or topics — there should be an absolute restriction on appropriating the scene of teaching for partisan political ideals. Teachers who use the classroom to indoctrinate make the enterprise of higher education vulnerable to its critics and shortchange students in the guise of showing them the true way.

Parallel to "partisan political ideals" are those of religious views (which are currently partisan dividers, but don't have to be - BOTH parties have pandered to religion in schools on occasion and some Democratic Party policy makers are trying to see what allowances to the religious conservatives they can make to get the votes), particularly in the public school (K-12) world.

ok, so what's the message?

The People's Business:

Nonetheless, some members [of the House] had no trouble explaining the value of the dead-end debate [on gay marriage amendment]. "This is probably the best message we can give to the Middle East in regards to the trouble we are having over there right now," said Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.).

Ok, I give up.  What is the "message"?

• we're just as restrictive of people's rights in the name of religion as you are!
  
  
• we actually think the middle east isn't something we should be concerned about so we'll just deal with a meaningless internal policy!
  
  
• like you, we think it best to leave all our real decisions in the hands of an incompetant figurehead acting as a total dictator, so we'll argue about stuff that doesn't matter!
  
  
• hey, let us show you how you too can let religion dominate your politics and still call it "democracy"!
  
  
• yeah, we're full of hatred and bigotry driven by religion, but at least we don't kill people over it...(unless they run abortion clinics)!
  
  
• its much easier to look good than to do good!
  
  
• FISHTANK!

well, that last one is about as valid as any of the others...

(granted, the quote may have been out of context, but still...)

I still firmly believe...

...that if someone takes the two Matrix sequels and edits them down to just a single movie, 3 hours long, with ONLY the bits that take place inside the Matrix itself, they'd have a great film instead of two nice but overblown action flicks.

Sorry W. Brothers, but in spite of everything, nobody gives a shit about Zion.  Stick to the good stuff, ok?