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Archive page 39 of 73

Mar 29, 2016

Learn About Flood Insurance When Renting

Kayda Norman with QuoteWizard, the insurance purchasing website, interviewed me for a new article on the ins and outs of flood insurance for renters. A Preferred Risk Policy gives coverage for both…

Mar 25, 2016

Chernobyl as Brownfield

There's an interesting article about possibly using the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone[^nextmonth] to store radioactive materials. That's interesting, and probably stupid, but that's not important right now. What struck me is a comment…

Mar 21, 2016

What to Do When Tornados Strike

Roomi, a website connecting potential roommates, has just opened up services in Texas. To help renters in Texas prepare for the worst, Emma Goddard interviewed me about how to prepare for a…

Mar 12, 2016

An Observation on Central Bank Coordination

There's an interesting story about a typo and an electronic robbery from the Bangladesh Bank. Basically, a bunch of hackers issued fake transfer orders for the Bangladesh Bank account at the New…

Mar 8, 2016

Now is the Time for Stormwater Reform

The Howard County Council has killed the plan to remove the stormwater remediation fee: ::embed{href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/howard/ellicott-city/ph-ho-cf-council-vote-0310-20160307-story.html"} This is good, but as I wrote in January, the real motivation for the stormwater fee is…

Mar 4, 2016

Remedial Placements

When you start at a community college, you take an English test and a math test and these results place you into the right place in the curriculum. And it's not just…

Feb 29, 2016

The Wave Equation in R

The wave equation is a classic example of a partial differential equation. It comes in several variants and has applications beyond the name. In principle, the wave equation describes the path of…

Feb 27, 2016

Instructor Presence in the Online Classroom

I think instructor presence is critical to student engagement, for all the obvious reasons. I've occasionally had students connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter, those are passive engagements. I once, in…

Feb 26, 2016

Cheerleading the Online Classroom

I have taught online for UMUC since 2010. And I quickly learned to explain that I was more like a class cheerleader than the class professor. In the online classroom, the student…

Feb 25, 2016

Notes on Expected Papal Life Spans

There's an interesting article in Significance about the expected lifespan of popes: Like other populations, popes have experienced a generally increased life expectancy – but statistically, how many years can the present…