HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Rise of the Machines:

Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according to new research.

In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software — with reduced face time with instructors — did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.

The study comes at a time when “smart” teaching software is being increasingly included in conversations about redrawing the economics of higher education. Recent investments by high-profile universities in “massively open online courses,” or MOOCs, has elevated the notion that technology has reached a tipping point: with the right design, an online education platform, under the direction of a single professor, might be capable of delivering meaningful education to hundreds of thousands of students at once.

This is going to bring about massive change. If only there were somewhere you could go for an analysis of what’s going on.

WAR ON WOMEN: Al Gore Implicated In Sexual-Harassment Lawsuit? No chakras were released, as far as I can tell.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to say that something causes 16% of cancers?

THE CRAZIEST BUILDS from Maker Faire 2012.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals on sporting goods.

UPSIDE OF THE OBAMA ECONOMY: Less Traffic! “Traffic congestion dropped 30% last year from 2010 in the USA’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, driven largely by higher gas prices and a spotty economic recovery, according to a new study by a Washington-state firm that tracks traffic flows. That was the largest drop since the nation plunged into recession in December 2007.”

But InstaPundit was on this story months ago.

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists regenerate the optic nerve, restore some components of vision. “Researchers have long tried to get the optic nerve to regenerate when injured, with some success, but no one has been able to demonstrate recovery of vision. A team at Boston Children’s Hospital reports a three-pronged intervention that not only got optic nerve fibers to grow the full length of the visual pathway (from retina to the visual areas of the brain), but also restored some basic elements of vision in live mice.”

TEN WAYS YOU CAN TELL the Bain attack is bombing.

ROLES, REVERSED: Their Rules, Not Ours: Time to Vet Private Lives of Journalists? There’s a lot to vet.

SHOCKER: Restaurant Foods Often Fattening.

ANOTHER READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Celia Hayes writes:

Is this the right week to ask you for a plug for my books? I have six novels out there, historical fiction novels, set on the American frontier. My first, To Truckee’s Trail went into a second edition last year and is still a strong seller. Like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going, and going and going. I also have The Adelsverein Trilogy – about the German settlements in frontier Texas, and a pair of novels about a woman’s life in early Texas … which is kind of a dramatized history lesson about the Republic of Texas.

I most firmly believe that we have to reclaim our history from the people who have been mis-teaching it all these years – and the very best way is to make a ripping good yarn. My Amazon author page is here.

I’ve been a reader of Instapundit for many years – and am now a contributor at Chicagoboyz.net … even though I am not from Chicago or a boyz.

It’s not a requirement, apparently.

TWEENS ON THE RUNWAY: When Did High-Fashion Models Get So Young?

JIM TREACHER: Obama Backer and Former CNN Exec Puts Dog Poop in Gay Couple’s Mailbox. “That’s my favorite kind of headline, because all I have to do is present the relevant facts. This is hardly the first time ‘CNN’ and ‘dog poop’ have been used in the same sentence, but this time it’s literal.”

LISTEN TO THE CHICKENS: Analysing chicken chatter could help farmers improve birds’ wellbeing. “Electrical engineers and poultry experts are teaming up to analyse how the sounds that chickens make relate to their behaviour and welfare. The aim is to develop a piece of listening software that could provide real-time guidance for chicken farmers.”

“GOOD” CHOLESTEROL: Not actually that good?

STACY MCCAIN: Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland.

HARVARD LAW UNBOUND BLOG PROTESTS ERIC HOLDER VISIT, gets hit with bogus DMCA claim. There sure are a lot of lefties out there trying to shut people up. It’s as if they lack confidence in the strength of their ideas.

INSTAVISION ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: I talk with Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges, And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Paid For. (Bumped).

More on this topic here.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama claims to get capitalism, he just opposes profits by people named Romney.

UPDATE: The Hill: Obama raised most from private equity, hedge funds in 2008.

IRA STOLL: Eduardo Saverin And Echoes of the Reichsfluchtsteuer. “The Reich flight tax that the Nazis imposed on Jews trying to flee in the 1930s was 25 percent. Democrats want Saverin to pay 30 percent.” But read the whole thing for an even more troubling bit of history.

WAPO: Barack Obama’s Arkansas Primary Problem.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bankruptcy Court Finds Undue Hardship, Discharges $340,000 Student Loan Debt of Former Law Student With Asperger Syndrome.

As I’ve already predicted, I think we’ll see a growth in law practices aimed at finding ways for people to escape student loan debt via disability, etc.

ROLL CALL: Gregory Jaczko’s Exit Poses Problems for White House. “The decision by the controversial head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and ally of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to quit Monday doesn’t necessarily end the headaches over nuclear power for the Obama administration. Gregory Jaczko, a former Reid aide and opponent of using the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, announced Monday morning that he would resign, capping months of infighting at the agency in charge of safeguarding nuclear power plants.”

#OBAMAFAIL:

I confess that not in my wildest dreams did I imagine President Obama’s campaign would be so awful. Oh sure, I knew it would be “awful” in the sense of going negative, being disingenuous and blaming everyone for his failings. But I was taken by surprise by how “awful,” in the sense of incompetent and ham-handed, it has been.

Virtually every gambit and issue (“war on women,” gay marriage, and now Bain) has gone haywire, arguably inflicting more damage to Obama than to Mitt Romney.

Romney sounds like he’s the president when he responds more in sadness than in anger to Obama’s assertion he’s going to make the campaign about Bain. Romney’s statement was restrained, with only a hint of contempt: “President Obama confirmed today that he will continue his attacks on the free enterprise system, which Mayor Booker and other leading Democrats have spoken out against. What this election is about is the 23 million Americans who are still struggling to find work and the millions who have lost their homes and have fallen into poverty. President Obama refuses to accept moral responsibility for his failed policies. My campaign is offering a positive agenda to help America get back to work.”

But now Obama’s even lost David “sharp crease” Brooks:

While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did 40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy — especially education, health care and the welfare state — operate in astonishingly similar ways.

The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government.

The Obama campaign seems to be drifting willy-nilly into the opposite camp, arguing that the pressures brought to bear by the capital markets over the past few decades were not a good thing, offering no comparably sized agenda to reform the public sector.

In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign that embodied and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.

Obama promised hope and change. It’s not like he actually planned to deliver. And really, when did a Chicago Democrat ever deliver anything like that?

Related thoughts from Mickey Kaus. “Romney’s Bain experience may or may not give him credence as a private sector ‘job creator.’ But is that really the main reason it’s relevant? Doesn’t it more obviously give him credence as a man who can cut the inefficiencies out of a bloated federal bureaucracy (that still doesn’t seem to think it faces in any kind of spending crisis).”