Month: January 2017

It’s an error you see a lot these days: the use of bias in place of biased. Bias is a noun. You can have a bias, show a bias, or worry about bias. But when used as an adjective to describe something, the word is biased. It’s incorrect to say, “your opinion is bias,” “that’s a bias statement,” or “don’t be so bias.”

There are a number of factors that make this mistake likely and even hint at the notion that one day it could stop being seen as a mistake. First, in speech people drop the d or t sound from the end of words so often that linguists have a label for the phenomenon: “t/d deletion.” Think about how you say “I passed through.” If you think very carefully about it, and speak very slowly you can get all the sounds in there, but in casual speech, it will come out as “I pass through.”

If a sound is often missing in speech, it’s likely to get left off in writing, too. There are a number of common errors where the –ed ending is left off of adjective forms. You see stain glass for stained glass, can goods for canned goods, bake chicken for baked chicken, and hundreds more like these (especially on menus).

When an adjective-noun phrase is used often enough, the –ed may eventually go missing for good. Skim milk, popcorn, and ice tea began their lives as skimmed milk, popped corn, and iced tea. Whip cream is well on its way to crossing over. Do you go over things with a fine-toothed comb or a fine-tooth comb? Either way works.

The process for biased losing its ending doesn’t quite fit this pattern. It doesn’t participate in any set phrases with a following noun of the skimmed milk variety (the most common words that follow biased are the prepositions against and toward). But bias fits another pattern: many adjectives that describe stances toward the world end in –ous, among them jealous, oblivious, righteous, serious, cautious, meticulous, treacherous, generous, callous, and pious. Bias might get a boost from the –ous family of adjectives because it ends in the same sequence of sounds.

Bias wouldn’t be the first such word to become an adjective because it coincidentally sounded like one. That’s what happened to the word genius, which has nothing to do with the –ous ending and was not used as an adjective until the 1920s, when people started saying things like “What a genius idea!” There are other words that coincidentally sound like they end in –ous, like prejudice and jaundice, which also seem especially susceptible to word errors of the bias type. “Are you prejudice?” gets thousands of hits on Google. “He was jaundice” and “She was jaundice” get thousands more.

Bias, prejudice, and jaundice are less likely than genius to become fully acceptable as adjectives because their spellings don’t fit as closely with the expectations for –ous words. They are still errors. But they are errors that reveal a complex sensitivity to the patterns of English. You might say the language is biased toward them.

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Lots of components factor into our career choices, and a big one is salary. A new report from LinkedIn confirms what many people in the healthcare industry already know: All those years in medical school really do pay off.

Drawing from its own salary data, LinkedIn recently compiled a list of the 20 positions in the U.S. with the highest median base pay. Jobs in the medical sector dominate, with cardiologist, radiologist, anesthesiologist, surgeon, and medical director occupying the top five slots. The list also makes room for tech positions like staff software engineer and legal jobs like patent attorney. You can refer to the full list of occupations and their median base salaries below.

1. Cardiologist – $356,000
2. Radiologist – $355,000
3. Anesthesiologist – $350,000
4. Surgeon – $338,000
5. Medical Director – $230,000
6. Pathologist – $225,000
7. Physician (general) – $220,000
8. Hospitalist – $220,000
9. Psychiatrist – $218,000
10. Senior Corporate Counsel – $175,000
11. Staff Software Engineer – $168,000
12. Dentist – $165,000
13. Director of Engineering – $164,000
14. Tax Director – $161,000
15. Director Product Management – $160,000
16. Patent Attorney – $160,000
17. Anesthetist – $156,000
18. Senior Software Engineering Manager – $155,000
19. Global Marketing Director – $155,000
20. Podiatrist – $150,000

If investing in eight-plus years of education isn’t a feasible option for you (or if the sight of blood makes you woozy), there are plenty of lucrative jobs that can be secured with just a Bachelor’s degree. According to information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest paying jobs that don’t require grad school are chief executive (with a median annual wage of $175,110), architectural and engineering manager ($132,800), and computer and information systems manager ($131,600). There’s also room for people to grow their salaries if they’ve already settled on a career—just as long as they’re willing to ask for what they want and seek out new opportunities.

Whether they’re recent college graduates or retirees, substitute teachers are a diverse bunch with a range of academic specialties and skills. But no matter their background, they arrive at work each morning often unsure of exactly who and what they’ll be teaching. Mental_floss spoke to a few subs to get the inside scoop on everything from why they love pregnant teachers to how they spot troublemakers.

1. MORNING PEOPLE GET MORE JOBS THAN NIGHT OWLS.

Substitute teachers must be willing to have a (very) flexible schedule, and it helps if they’re morning people. As early as 5:00 a.m., subs get a phone call—automated or from someone who works in the school’s office—offering them a job for that day. If they accept, they have an hour or two to get out of bed, get ready, and report to work. Some schools now use an email notification system, but early morning phone calls are more effective given the time-sensitive, often unexpected nature of substitute teaching.

2. FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE IMPORTANT.

According to Kevin, a substitute teacher who works at schools in Southern California, dealing with new groups of students can be challenging. “It’s very hard to establish authority in the classroom. As a newcomer, you’re the foreigner,” he explains.

To immediately establish their authority, some substitute teachers practice speaking with a powerful voice, exhibit confident body language, and shut down any disruptions swiftly and decisively. But no matter how confident a sub is, some students will take advantage of the teacher’s unfamiliarity with the class. “It’s hard to write up a student who you can’t name. In a high school setting, you usually get 30 to 38 students a period for five or six periods. That’s a lot of students who may or may not want to test their bounds that day,” Kevin says.

3. THEY’RE AN ECLECTIC BUNCH.

Substitute teachers range in age from recent college grads working toward their teaching certification to elderly retired people. But what unites them is a love of teaching. Beverly, a substitute teacher who has taught for over 56 years, says that subbing keeps her sharp and active. “I do it for mental stimulation and because it’s a terrific service. You have to stay stimulated and involved with people,” she says. “I find youngsters to be so forthright and honest. The kids light up my life.”

Besides being a variety of ages, substitute teachers also come from a variety of professions. “You can’t believe how many teachers used to be lawyers but couldn’t stand it,” Beverly says. Everyone from former nurses and flight attendants to chemical engineers have earned their teaching certificates and become subs, bringing their real-world experience into the classroom.

4. THEIR FACES MIGHT LOOK FAMILIAR.

In schools in Los Angeles and New York, many struggling actors work as substitute teachers because they can balance teaching gigs with auditions and short-term film shoots. Like actors, subs must be able to speak in front of groups of people, improvise when they don’t have good instructions, and be quick on their feet when something goes wrong.

5. THEY DON’T LOVE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS.

Because substitute teachers don’t have a set salary and work one day at a time, many of them face financial uncertainty, especially when holidays roll around. “Holidays can be devastating financially,” Kevin explains. When a school has the whole week of Thanksgiving off, subs don’t see that as a chance to relax. “In reality, a quarter of your paycheck for that month is gone,” Kevin says. “When you have student loans, insurance, etc. to pay, that extra little bit taken off your paycheck may mean you’re just scraping by.”

6. THEY HAVE TRICKS TO LEARN NAMES QUICKLY.

Facing a classroom of unfamiliar faces can be daunting, but subs have a few tricks up their sleeves to memorize student names in a flash. While some subs make seating charts as they take attendance, others use mnemonic devices to remember troublemakers’ monikers. Beverly admits that she doesn’t use anything fancy, but because she substitute teaches math and science classes at the same school, she sees the same kids year after year. “I see the same youngsters out of junior high and into high school, but I do have a seating chart as well. They’re always amazed when I know their names,” she explains.

7. THEY LOVE PREGNANT TEACHERS.

Subs seeking job stability hit the jackpot when full-time teachers get pregnant. “At the school I currently work at, there’s a woman who is subbing for the whole semester for a second grade teacher who is out on maternity leave,” says Kyle, a science teacher who worked as a sub before getting a full-time teaching gig. Besides pregnancies, long-term health challenges and injuries can present an opportunity for subs to get a steady gig. Beverly says she once took over for an entire semester because of another teacher’s broken hip.

8. SOME OF THEM ARE QUITE FAMILIAR WITH BUSYWORK.

Novelist Nicholson Baker, who wrote about his experience going undercover as a substitute teacher at six schools, describes the astonishingly large amount of busywork that subs must assign students. “I passed [work sheets] out by the thousands,” he noted in The New York Times.

While Baker laments the “fluff knowledge” and vocabulary lists that subs are expected to force students to memorize and regurgitate, some subs do teach lesson plans. Kyle, who has a math and science background, explains that some teachers felt comfortable with him teaching the lesson plan so the students wouldn’t fall behind. “I’d teach it and assign homework accordingly for what we covered in class,” he says. But he admits that for middle school or non-science classes, he would sometimes simply be given a video to show the kids, or a work sheet or quiz to pass out.

9. THEIR REPUTATION CAN PRECEDE THEM.

Once a sub has taught at the same school a few times, they can develop a reputation—good or bad—among students. “When I first started subbing, I was 23 or 24, so I wasn’t much older than these kids—especially the seniors—and I think they saw me more as a peer than an authority figure,” Kyle explains. “I thought if I kept a light and fun atmosphere, kids would show their appreciation with respect. But that’s not how kids’ minds work. If you give a little, they’ll want more. So I became stricter and sterner as I went on,” he adds.

10. THEY CAN OFTEN SPOT TROUBLEMAKERS FAST.

Although it might seem obvious which students are talking out of turn or giving the sub a hard time, substitute teachers have another way to quickly identify any mischievous students. “Usually, if a teacher has a really outrageous student, they’ll leave a note of warning for the sub. Sometimes the teacher will also leave a list of who the helpful students are,” Beverly says.

11. THEY MAY DEAL WITH INAPPROPRIATE STUDENT BEHAVIOR.

Kyle reveals that due to his young age and easygoing nature, some students tried to push the boundaries and act inappropriately with him: “[Students] would talk about or say things in front of me that I know they would never say in front of a teacher. I was once asked to party with some of the kids. Girls would try and flirt with me.” While male students typically tried to talk to him about basketball, female students frequently asked him if he had a girlfriend. “I would lose control of classrooms sometimes. Kids would get very wild, and sometimes would say inappropriate or abusive things to other students without fear of discipline,” he admits.

12. THEY’RE HONORED ON A SPECIAL DAY IN NOVEMBER.

The National Education Association established the annual Substitute Educators Day on the third Friday in November to honor subs around the country. Besides bringing awareness to the work that substitute teachers do, Substitute Educators Day supports subs in trying to get health benefits, professional development, and fair wages.

13. THEY CAN MAKE LASTING IMPRESSIONS ON THEIR STUDENTS.

Although most subs don’t see the same kids day after day, they can have a meaningful impact upon their students’ lives. “As an outsider, especially a younger teacher, students will often listen to you as someone who recently was in their shoes. Sometimes you talk to them one-on-one and give them a new perspective on why they should care about their schoolwork,” Kevin says.

And some students listen to their sub’s advice on studying and planning for the future. According to Kevin, students have approached him as he walked down the halls to thank him for encouraging them to get better grades.

“These experiences are few and far between, but it’s crazy to think that even these small talks with students can actually have a lasting impression,” he says.

All photos provided by iStock.

When we think of a medical examination, we usually picture a chilly gown, a sterile exam table, and a doctor using instruments developed well over a century ago to poke, probe, and magnify. But thanks to the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, a computer’s “eye” is now able to make diagnoses in seconds.

According to WIRED, an influx of phone apps and simple interfaces are popping up to aid physicians in complex medical cases where symptoms don’t point to obvious conclusions. Face2Gene, an app that sprung out of work identifying facial features for tagging purposes on Facebook, looks at subtle variations in the face—eye symmetry, ear position—and calculates what ailments might match that phenotype. (Face2Gene’s developers say the program can now identify nearly half of the 8000 genetic syndromes known to exist.)

Another application under development, the RightEye GeoPref Autism Test, tests eye movement using infrared sensors while a child observes video footage. Developers believe that the test can help assess symptoms of autism in infants as young as 12 months. Winterlight Labs’s “deep learning” machine, meanwhile, picks up subtle signs of cognitive impairment in speech, recognizing symptoms of Alzheimer’s before it’s too late to treat it.

While it might be some time before these resources are commonplace among specialists, they do point to a future where a diagnosis for hard-to-detect disorders and diseases may be faster and more accurate than ever before.

[h/t Wired]

Back in 1999 it was easy to view the World Wide Web as a passing fad. Google was a year old, Facebook was about five years down the road, and most people were still using noisy dial-up to get online. But as this video shows, the internet had an early advocate in David Bowie

The 18-year-old interview was recently shared by Paleofuture on the one-year anniversary of the musician’s death. In it, Bowie makes a case for the internet as the new frontier for “the subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic and nihilistic …”

His interviewer, BBC host Jeremy Paxman, isn’t quite convinced. Paxman claims that the internet “is just a tool” and that its potential has been “hugely exaggerated,” making Bowie’s predictions feel even more uncanny. Bowie foretells of the growing role the audience will have in the art: “I really embrace the idea that there’s a new demystification process between the artist and the audience,” he says. “… The interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.”

The interview also a features a few charming Bowie-isms, like his tongue-in-cheek characterization of the web as “an alien lifeform.” While some of his ideas may have sounded far-out in 1999, they mostly ring true today. “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg,” Bowie said. “I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.” You can watch the interview in its entirety below.

[h/t Paleofuture]

Decades before The Simpsons predicted a President Trump, an obscure CBS Western from the 1950s called Trackdown featured a man who claimed he could prevent the end of the world by building a wall. The man’s name was Walter Trump, and he shares a number of similarities with the president-elect.

As pointed out by Snopes, in the episode “The End of the World,” which aired on May 8, 1958, the mysterious Trump was a confidence man, decked out in a cultish robe, who arrived in the town of Talpa and, “tells the townspeople that a cosmic explosion will rain fire on the town and that he is the only one that can save them from death.” The wall he wanted to build was designed to keep out certain doom, of course, but his mere presence arouses suspicion from some of the locals.

Trump’s plan never comes to fruition, and he’s eventually brought to justice by the show’s hero, Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, for grand theft and fraud. YouTube user Marcy Brafman uploaded portions of the episode on November 4, 2016, just four days before the presidential election. You can check it out below to see the bizarre coincidence for yourself:

[h/t The Wrap]