"Computers are drugs. But drugs are computers."

Ivy League Grads Can’t Pass the New GED - The Daily Beast: "A corporation privatized the test, made it four times more expensive, and made it almost impossible to pass...

 The number of people who passed the GED—the high school equivalency test long seen as a “good enough diploma”—plummeted this year. About 86,500 people passed the new test in 2014, compared with 540,535 in 2013...

Part of the reason the GED is so hard is that it tests what you learn in high school, and most of what you learn in high school simply does not come up again in real life. Today I mostly use math to figure out the tip at a restaurant or divide bills among my roommates. And while I write for a living, I don’t often talk about specific verb tenses or perform close readings on 19th-century literature. Plus the test is aligned with Common Core, a set of standards not in place when I and nearly all my fellow test-takers were in high school...

I spent nearly seven hours taking the test, wracking my brain for details I haven’t thought about since 2005, when I graduated from high school. When it was all over, I felt exhausted and dumb. I did well on one test (social studies) and got about 60 percent of the questions right on two more (math and science). The test in which I thought I’d shine brightest—language arts—was my worst subject: I got just over half the questions right. If this were the real GED, I’d need to retake at least one of the tests...

But the new test is also significantly more expensive than before. One test costs about $120, up from costs closer to $30 (the specific price varies from state to state). Since it’s harder, test-takers are more likely to need to take the test again to pass all four sections, and a new scoring method means a high score on one test will no longer buoy a lower one on another. That high sticker price seems likely to keep test-takers from returning a second time: 85 percent of people who failed the cheaper, easier test already didn’t come back to try again, Turner said. And while results of the old GED just gave a score, the new computerized test comes with a customized study guide showing exactly what test-takers should study before trying again. There’s money in that, too. Pearson also sells test prep books and courses for all four new GED tests."

Next week!

The Meaning of Life: Finding Your True Identity - Tony Robbins Blog: "Identity is the strongest force in human personality. We all have a deep and abiding need to remain consistent with how we define ourselves. Any transformation you make within yourself will depend on your ability to expand this identity. By building a new, empowering set of beliefs, you can create a lasting transformation within yourself and in your life...

The fastest way to expand our identity is to do something that’s inconsistent with our current self-image. For example, complete a physical challenge like surfing or sky diving as a way to shake things up...

Our personal identities are in a constant state of evolution. We all contain the power to reinvent ourselves and create a new, empowered identity that expands what is possible in our lives. The key is to take conscious control of the beliefs we are creating about ourselves, so they can propel us toward what we desire most."

Shades of Morris Day, which means all sorts of James Brown funk.

 New Documentary Shows The ‘Moderate’ Klan of North Carolina - The Daily Beast: "The Tarheel State had a reputation as the most progressive in the country on race relations. But it also had the biggest Klan chapter in the South. If you were driving through North Carolina in the mid-1960s, chances are you’d see this billboard: “You are in the heart of Klan country. Welcome to North Carolina. Join the United Klans of America, Inc. Help fight integration and communism!” Klan support in the South was not exactly breaking news. What made these highway signs stand out was the fact that they were fairly common in what had long been considered the most progressive state in the region, where the civil rights movement had been met with a minimum of bloodshed and violence. But the fact is, by 1966 the Tar Heel State had over 10,000 KKK members, more than all the other Southern states combined...

So why North Carolina? As it turns out, the strength of the Klan was a response to the Tar Heel State’s relatively smooth transition from segregation to integration. “White people in North Carolina could not count on their politicians to resist integration like the politicians in Mississippi and Alabama,” Cunningham told the Daily Beast, “so there was this opening the Klan could step into.” It also helped that North Carolina had a Klan organizer like Bob Jones, a former lightning rod salesman who had been discharged from the Navy for refusing to salute a black officer. Jones began organizing in 1963, claiming to be a voice for poor whites who felt threatened by black progress and who were left behind by the state’s economic upturn...

Eventually, however, Jones and his Klan movement were brought down by a number of factors. Following the violence in Selma, Ala. and the murder of white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo—all recounted in the current film “Selma”—the FBI, which had been indifferent, if not openly hostile, to the civil rights movement, was forced to take on the Klan. That, plus a Jones confidant turned informant and Jones’ conviction on contempt of Congress charges after he refused to turn over the Klan’s bank accounts to a congressional committee, reduced the North Carolina KKK to a shell of its former self. Yet racial and economic anxiety, the forces that made the Klan a player in North Carolina and the South, still existed. In North CarolinaCarolina, they were channeled into support for hard-right racial demagogue Jesse Helms, elected five times to the U.S. Senate."

Inside the final season of 'Parks and Recreation' | Inside TV | EW.com: "...Parks dug itself out of that pit, found its own jaunty, homespun rhythm, and grew into one of the sharpest and warmest comedies in years. Laced with a savvy, topical wit with just right amount of bite, it has birthed two of TV’s most indelible characters, Poehler’s dare-to-dream liberal Knope and Offerman’s keep-your-dreams-between-you-and-your-pillow libertarian Swanson; their ideal-clashing friendship served as the show’s bread and butter—or, rather, steak and waffles. It has become a cultural reference point on college campuses and on social media. It has expanded Pawnee into a richly detailed folksy-weirdo universe almost as colorful as The Simpsons‘ Springfield.

...the sheer idiocy of Chris Pratt’s happy-go-dopey Andy Dwyer. “He may be mentally stupid, but he’s also emotionally stupid,” mock-defends Pratt. “IQ is just a number, and his is really low.”

Andy’s persona as children’s entertainer Johnny Karate has landed him his own kick-ass public-access program called Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show. You’ll also meet another deadly serious Andy character, Johnny Karate’s brother—named… Jonathan Karate. “He wears a black karate gi, so it’s different,” explains Pratt. “When he wants to teach a kid a lesson about not talking to strangers or not holding in farts, that’s Jonathan Karate. He’s the true sensei. He’s a total Miyagi.”"

Random Thoughts: "Our schools and colleges are laying a guilt trip on those young people whose parents are productive, and who are raising them to become productive. What is amazing is how easily this has been done, largely just by replacing the word "achievement" with the word "privilege.""

Koch Bros to Bankroll Prison Reform - The Daily Beast: "The Koch brothers are turning their attention and resources to reforming the criminal justice system...

The libertarian-leaning billionaires who funded an endless stream of anti-Obamacare ads against Democratic candidates in 2014 are turning their focus to a new mission: galvanizing conservatives to pass meaningful criminal justice reform. Their policy wish list includes securing more money for public defenders, lessening sentencing disparities that affect the least well off, reforming mandatory minimums, and aiding prisoners so that they can re-enter society after serving time behind bars. It’s a counterintuitive push for the Kochs, known for more than bankrolling Republican campaigns than bettering the lives of ex-cons, with an unusual coalition of supporters...

Quietly over the past decade, a Koch Industries spokesman told The Daily Beast, the Kochs have poured seven figures in donations toward criminal justice reform, mainly through the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. As a point of comparison, the Kochs spent at least $8.5 million on political campaigns in 2014 alone—to the benefit of Republicans across the country, and the dismay of Democrats. The Kochs say they’re concerned about mass incarceration, too many criminal laws, and a system that disproportionately weighs on the poor and minorities. And over the next year, they promise to refocus on criminal justice reform."

Simulated Reality: Are We Living in the Matrix?: "The Simulation Argument presented by Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom is ambitious in that it that it does not stop by merely suggesting that we might be living in a simulated universe, it argues that we probably are living in a simulated universe! 

The argument uses evidence gathered from the world around us (about the rapid growth of our computer technology) and solid scientific reasoning to show that a rational scientific person has to take seriously the possibility that we are already living in a computer simulation. The basic principle behind this theory is that the human civilisation will one day have access to sufficient computing power capable of running simulations of their ancestors (us!). Maybe in a few thousand years in the future we might actually make a re-appearance (as Sims) in those advanced simulations. That doesn't sound too far-fetched, does it? But what if it is the case that human civilisation has, in fact, already reached that advanced state and is already running those simulations? That would mean we are living in a simulated world right now! 

In fact, the future human race could easily create simulations containing astronomical numbers of simulated beings (this has the ring of truth to it: when you run The Sims there's only one of you, but the program contains thousands of Sims). There is therefore a possibility that the number of conscious, simulated humans will one day become very much larger than the number of real humans. The Simulation Argument then goes one step further by stating that with the number of simulated humans inevitably outnumbering real humans, the computer simulation scenario is actually the most probable situation (unless you think the human race is going to become extinct pretty soon, or we're going to get bored with The Sims and start playing Tetris again - both of which seem quite unlikely). 

To sum up, the Simulation Argument is a rigorously-presented argument which means that a rational, scientific person considering the extraordinary recent increase in computing power available to us, now has to treat seriously the possibility that we are already living in computer simulation. "

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch - New York Times: "Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems. 

Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors. There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. 

But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world. The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run. 

But there are a couple of alternative hypotheses, as Dr. Bostrom points out. One is that civilization never attains the technology to run simulations (perhaps because it self-destructs before reaching that stage). The other hypothesis is that posthumans decide not to run the simulations. “This kind of posthuman might have other ways of having fun, like stimulating their pleasure centers directly,” Dr. Bostrom says...

Dr. Bostrom doesn’t pretend to know which of these hypotheses is more likely, but he thinks none of them can be ruled out. “My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,” he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.” 

My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon. It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude."

Why Make a Matrix? And Why You Might Be In One: "The so-called Simulation argument, which I introduced a few years ago, makes this line of reasoning more precise and takes it to its logical conclusion. The conclusion is that there are three basic possibilities at least one of which is true. The first possibility is that the human species will almost certainly go extinct before becoming technologically mature. The second possibility is that almost no technologically mature civilization is interested in building Matrices. The third possibility is that we are almost certainly living in a Matrix. 

Why? Because if the first two possibilities are not the case, then there are more “people” living in Matrices than in “real worlds.” As a “person” then the chances are that you are living in a Matrix rather than in a “real world.” The Simulation argument does not tell us which of these three possibilities obtain, only that at least one of them does. The argument employs some math and probability theory, but the basic idea can be understood without recourse to technical apparatus...

The third possibility is the most intriguing. If the vast majority of all people with other kind of experiences live in Matrices then we probably live in a Matrix. Unless we had some specific evidence to the contrary, we would therefore have to conclude that the world we see around us exists only by virtue of being simulated on a powerful computer built by some technologically highly advanced Architect."