Chaos Program

At the beginning of the movie The Longest Day, the Germans have broken an important code the Allies use to communicate with the French Resistance. At least they think they have. They believe that when a line from a particular poem is read on the radio, it will be the signal that the invasion of France (D-Day) is imminent. They don’t know what the French resistance fighters are supposed to do about it, where it will happen or much of anything else, but they will at least know the time with possibly as much as several hours of warning.

It’s possible that the message carries information about specific assignments or even where to find further instructions. The movie (one of those rare masterpieces, by the way, that may be more interesting just to listen to, than to watch) does not go into detail about the communications network that put these codes in place, or the people who were imprisoned, tortured or murdered by the Gestapo to find ways to weld the scattered cells into a guerilla army that could be set in motion so well at the required time.

That brief scene, though, and others, such as the one where resistance members hear the coded signal, should help teach us something that’s been missing from the commentary about the really interesting role of Twitter in the protests in Iran this week. That lesson is that spontaneous revolutions are not just uncommon, they are almost impossible in a modern police state.
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I read a few articles this week about the 60th anniversary of the George Orwell novel 1984 (including this interesting one at National Review Online) and one thing that struck me is that very few literary works get reviewed 60 years after their publication. Even fewer good ones get reviewed/taught/discussed 60 years later. Everybody knows at least a little about 1984, even those of us who have not yet read it (In school, I was in the class that was assigned Animal Farm instead. Interesting book. Hated the pigs).

But this is not a review of 1984. That would be silly since I just admitted I haven’t read it! But it seems I should. Traditionally, reading has been seen as a way of passing on culture – not the kind of culture that causes people to donate money to the opera or spend time at museums but the kind that shapes the way people think. That’s why an old fashioned Classical Education valued Socrates and Thomas Aquinas among others. Agree with them or not, these were smart people and excellent teachers.

Well, that’s the official story, anyway.
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Every time the power goes out, I have to re-install the driver for my wife’s printer. Every time, including (once again) today. I live in the country, beyond the suburbs into cow country, where it seems sometimes that the power goes out every time there’s a high wind. It doesn’t stay out for very long. Usually no more than ten minutes or so. That’s still enough to make me reinstall the driver. Oh! And VMWare player, which I use on my own computer. I figure that’s a bug that was probably fixed in a newer version but the last time I tried to upgrade, it completely hosed my network connections. After about 4 hours of fighting with it, I downgraded again. It works.

There’s actually a point to this other than just complaining about computers. I make my living (such as it is) with the things. Complaining about them is just part of the job. The bigger point is that, believe it or not, the computer age is still very young and there’s a lot we don’t fully understand about how to make software operate to our satisfaction. Things that should be easy aren’t always and benefits we think we should see sometimes don’t materialize.

Which brings me to the subject of a very interesting recent report (actually a thesis) summarizing studies of how students use software intended to help them learn to do arithmetic word problems. For a short article about the paper, see here. For  the paper itself, go here. Three studies are considered. The purpose was to learn about how students interact with educational software when there has been a breakdown situation. That is, when they get the wrong answer, what do they do?
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