Chipping the web – drop it
February 27th, 2007 6:01:25 pm pst by 
Sterling Camden
“Y “: The character “Y” is sometimes used to represent the vertical marks made by a stylus in clay to form cuneiform characters. In the Babylonian sexagesimal number system, a single “Y” in the sixties place followed by an empty space in the ones place would indicate the number 60.
The recent 60 Minutes piece on autism bought into the lie that the increase in autism numbers comes only from better diagnosis. If you bought it too, read this (thanks, Lenny). More from Mercola.
I’d answer Paul’s question here, but that would spoil the ending.
Randy answers Jeremiah’s meme, as forwarded by me. Randy prefers email to feeds, a preference he shares with the ever-growing user base of his R|Mail product.
Yes, Shelley, we have a problem. I see it in my daughter, who feels like she just can’t do math. I know she has the native ability, but something has taken away her motivation. If it’s gone by fourth grade, how do you get it back for a career?
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I’d chat with her teacher, Sterling. See if he or she is doing what they can to encourage all the kids, not just the boys. Then you might want to look into the computer math games for kids. They can help generate confidence, as well as interest.
Finally: chat with her about her social group. Is it ‘not cool’ for girls to do well with math or science? She’s getting into an age where boys and girls begin to really differentiate between each other, and one aspect is to alter behavior so as to ‘fit’.
Note: I am not a parent…but I was a young girl, once.
Thanks for your suggestions, Shelley. I think it has a lot to do with her social group. I think maybe it isn’t “cool” for girls to speak up and ask questions when they need help. We’ve spoken with her teacher about it, and he doesn’t seem too bothered about it. Public schools. She had a great science-oriented teacher last year, so at least she has some interest in science. But math is anathema to her for now.
She used to play math games on the computer, but she’s beyond all those now (at least the ones we know about). She’s quite a gamer, still, but they’re mostly arcade-style or role-based games. Do you know of any fun games that exercise multiplication and division?
[...] Drop it: Harry Truman and Richard Nixon were each 61 years old when they decided to drop the atomic bomb and the presidency, respectively. [...]
[...] Chipping the web – drop it — Chip’s Quips (tags: web20 email rmail) [...]
If you gently steered her toward games that have some scripting capabilities, that might get her interested in programming to at least some slight degree. Programming tends to lead to thinking logically, in the “algebraic logic” sense — which at least tends to lead to facility with math, if not enthusiasm for it (I know math doesn’t exactly enthuse me most of the time, but I’m damned good at what math I know).
Also . . . that might help lead to interest in web development for purposes of putting together her own websites. While her friends might develop interest in MySpace profiles, she might come up with something even better if she designs it herself (not hard to do, considering how awful MySpace is). It might be worthwhile to consider paths of encouragement toward web development skills.
You probably don’t want to directly suggest stuff in this direction so much as provide opportunities for her to choose to be channeled in this direction — if that makes any sense.
Also, y’know, you might want to look into stuff like charter schools and the like. Just a thought.
Thanks, apotheon. Are you thinking of any specific games?
Alas, no. I remember there were such things a while back, and I can only imagine that there are some now (and probably more sophisticated, if logic holds). I haven’t really been involved in computer gaming all that much, though.
One thing comes to mind that, while probably not scriptable per se, at least begins to lead in that direction: Neverwinter Nights. Even better, you could get your daughter interested in non-Windows OSes by getting the Linux version of the game for yourself, installing it on a Linux system, and seeing if she’d possibly get interested. The downside of course is that it’s D&D stuff, which kinda requires a certain geekish bent to begin with.
I think the first-person competitive shooter whose engine is open source (I don’t remember which — the Half-Life engine, maybe) provides plenty of opportunity for setting development. I’m not really sure. It’s a bit more mainstream than Neverwinter Nights, but very testosterone-laden, so I think its likelihood of attracting your daughter’s attention might be about on par with the other.
I’d have to start researching in earnest. Before I do so, though, I have about a thousand other things to do, including playing some World of Warcraft tonight. Unless it has simply evaded me so far, there’s nothing like real scriptability in WoW at all.