Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question. - Stephen Jay Gould

Those leaders who fear free and critical thought among the masses are to be feared… well not so much feared as removed… no on third thought… don’t let them be leaders in the first place.

So, let’s make heros of those who smuggle books into areas where they have been banned.

I buy and read used books. I judge the previous readers by the quality of their marginalia.

I just encountered the sentence, “You can’t judge a book by its lover.” (I doubled checked I didn’t introduce another typo… the word in the sentence is “lover.”)

Is this a typo? Is it true? Is it a typo that is more/ less true than the cliche?

If you can’t as them questions, are they really teachers?

Don’t conflate your conclusions grounded in cognitive biases with evidence.

Science does not have “clergy.” We have folks who think, speak, and write better than most of us, but their ideas are to be challenged and those that don’t stand up to empirical evidence are rejected no matter the authority who espoused them.

Create a system to promote anything you want and the first thing folks do is figure out how to game the system rather than doing what you seek to promote.

Just because you have been hired, does not mean you have the expertise you need.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence… and the evidence needs to be shared.

Believe what you want/ Physics, chemistry, and biology will win.

“It’s not going to be quick or easy.” Folks who bring this (accurate) news are unlikely to be hired.

Propaganda and misinformation. Those things that have so affected recent discourse. They are not new. Generations of propagandists have been at work influencing our beliefs.

“The opposite of knowledge is uncertainty.” Yup.

“Better” is a meaningless word unless you include for whom, for what, when, in what circumstances?

“Blank slate” describe the preferred approach to dealing with student misbehavior. “Blank slate” does not describe how students arrive in your classroom cognitively, emotionally, physically, etc.

Keep paying attention when a “ground breaking” discovery is made. The findings are usually not replicated. That’s just how science (and media) works.

“Encyclopedias contributed to the French Revolution,” paraphrasing Simon Winchester.

As I think about it, that explains much that we see today.

IT professionals often say "that's the way we do it." At least they have a reason as the IT they add often depends on the IT they have.