Some interesting reads you might enjoy this week.
Machine Grading and Moral Learning – The New Atlantis – “Responding to and evaluating students’ written work does more than just describe students, or distinguish them. Grading is also pedagogical: it corrects and informs, rewards and reinforces someone’s understanding of the world. Because it has the potential to change a student, grading is a moral hazard. Grading well requires knowing what human beings are for and educating them accordingly; how and why one grades is a confession of one’s beliefs about the ultimate destiny of man. A professor is an architect of the intellectual life, making castles of minds and cathedrals of culture — or slums and factories, as the case may be.” The New Atlantis
Yuppie Prohibition League Denounces Pot Legalization | Rolling Stone – “No, actually, by making it legal, we’re deciding that letting people get high is a lesser evil compared to a person’s life being derailed forever by a pointless and intrinsically hypocritical marijuana arrest. But Brooks/Brown/Scarborough wouldn’t know anything about that, apparently.” Rolling Stone
Virtualsity, by Michael Barron – “What music can we expect to hear from these new digital instruments? If a generation of people who grew up listening to plugged-in instruments and guitar solos have moved onto the computer, what happens when a generation of musicians who have learned to sample and manipulate automated audio clips are given the tools for expressive digital instrumentation? A new musical genre, perhaps, or new variations on the familiar. It’s a chicken-and-egg question, but it may take only one virtualoso to hatch the answer.” Harper’s
Obama’s “Limited” Mission in Iraq – The New Yorker – “There can be no doubt about Obama’s intentions. Even with ruthless fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) overrunning large parts of northern Iraq, the President has clearly demonstrated in recent weeks that he is deeply reluctant to use U.S. firepower in an effort to halt their advance. Spurning calls from the Iraqi government, and from the Kurds, to shore up American forces and carpet bomb the militants, he instead dispatched a few hundred military advisers to Iraq, saying that they’d assess the situation and report back. (George Packer has written about the people fleeing ISIS, and Dexter Filkins has urged American military support.)” The New Yorker
The War Photo No One Would Publish – The Atlantic – The Iraqi soldier died attempting to pull himself up over the dashboard of his truck. The flames engulfed his vehicle and incinerated his body, turning him to dusty ash and blackened bone. In a photograph taken soon afterward, the soldier’s hand reaches out of the shattered windshield, which frames his face and chest. The colors and textures of his hand and shoulders look like those of the scorched and rusted metal around him. Fire has destroyed most of his features, leaving behind a skeletal face, fixed in a final rictus. He stares without eyes. On February 28, 1991, Kenneth Jarecke stood in front of the charred man, parked amid the carbonized bodies of his fellow soldiers, and photographed him. The Atlantic
