More interesting items Feb 22

It's my birthday! Will I be able to do the poem? Let's see later.

Meanwhile, here are some interesting things today:

1. Online nursing courses. Nursing is really the profession of the current age. How long this age will be, only time can tell. The problem I see here is the lack of government control on nursing schools and courses. There are serious problems especially for schools who could not produce board passers. Imagine all the other tests our nursing graduates will have to take! If they could not even pass the board, how will they pass the english proficiency test?
2. In Teacher's InfoLink (Eferza Academic Publications), we read that in the 1970s, we only have 40 nursing schools in the country. Now, we have about 350. Excuse it to the changing needs. But check this out: Out of the 94 that had less than five years of Board performance, 42 (yes that's right!) had ZERO PASSING RATES! 42 schools not producing even a single board passer!
3. More from Teacher's Infolink - Here is the NAT results for Grade 6 (1.6million students) SY 2004-2005 (Achievement Levels): Only 20% of the students have mastery (75-100% score). Almost 30% (471,624 students) has no mastery (below 50%). Now, let's look at individual schools! Only 12.47% of schools have mastery. Again, 31% of the schools - corresponding to 8,853 schools have "no mastery" levels. Now, while this data is from the public schools, this is still a cause of worry since more (with a capital M, I suppose) students are in the public schools.
4. According to the Duke University scientists Kelly Jordan and Elizabeth Brannon, babies have abstract numerical sense. It would seem to conclude that before children could even speak, they have an innate sense of numeracy. More from science blog. I am reminded of my innate concepts of unity, relation and causality, etc in my original manuscript of One World - which I am still looking for. It's related to the Categories? described by Kant, although I have not fully read nor understood that. For fear of insanity too? Anyways.
5. Comparing between Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy - one of the most mind-boggling achievements of humans (measuring fast moving things while himself moving at great speed) - we find that Milky Way is the winner for massiveness. More here.