Kafka In Amadora

A question that has since hung like a sword of Damocles over all knowledge, from the most trivial to the most advanced: How can we ever be justified in generalizing from what we've seen to what we haven't? Thus a good learner is forever validating the narrow path between blindness and hallucination. [Pedro Domingos (2015), The Master Algorithm , Penguin Books]

I regard the whole Northwestern United States to be among the global hubs of our present derangements. This week it emerged that Seattle 's school board has decided even maths must be subjected to the same numbing and unthinking orthodoxy of our time. In particular that mathematics must – like everything else – be seen through the prism of racism and oppression. Thus as the Seattle Public Schools guidelines for maths education show, students in Seattle schools will be invited to consider questions such as "Where does Power and Oppression show up in our math experience?" or "How has math been used to resist and liberate people and communities of color from oppression?" The cleverer students will realise that there is a "correct" answer to the questions, whether or not those answers are true – as there is to every other question of our age. They'll work out that the answer to every question posed by the Seattle authorities will always and ever

Carmen Bond by Alfonso Font