MicroMash targets people like me who prefer to study on our own time and may well work while preparing (as I have been doing). They also have a computer-based MBE study system that claims to adapt to your level of success with particular areas, focusing on your weaknesses (I liked this). As it turns out, though, study materials are entirely paper based, and consist of some 40 pounds of outlines and books. There did not seem to be any real online study materials and very few, if any, audio lectures. Nothing was particularly portable, and the Web-based MBE question system requires an Internet connection to function. (I didn’t like this.) Cost is roughly $1,600 for MBE+California, with a money-back guarantee.

BarMax is somewhat similar in focus, but builds itself around an iPod Touch/iPhone app. It is, I think, the most expensive app in the Apple app store: $999 for the California focused app, no real refunds available (but you keep access forever, so if you need to take the exam again, you keep your materials). It comes with no paper at all, although it does have Word documents (outlines, etc.) that you can print out. Everything else is on the iPod, including outlines and hours of audio lectures. The lectures could use better audio quality, but they seem to cover the most important areas of the law for the exam in a relatively quick and efficient form. It also has a built-in flash card system and MBE test question section that works well.

Most importantly for me, BarMax is portable. My most effective studying came from long walks all around my neighborhood, focusing on the lectures and taking some notes as I went, then following up with the written materials later, along with MBE question review and practice exams.

MicroMash had good materials, but dumping 40 pounds of books on me as my only tool for studying was simply not practical for the way I personally work. BarMax, even if it is new and more experimental, fit my study style much, much better. As a result, I’ve been using BarMax every day for the last month+, but I returned MicroMash for a full refund after a week of trying to use it.

In short: I recommend BarMax. Good concept, good (not perfect yet) execution (bettwe sound would be good, for example), effective for multiple ways of studying (other than for those who prefer paper books–I would recommend MicroMash for you).

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The bar approaches: BarMax vs. MicroMash is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

Looked at historically, though, the turn to philosophy of science for support is not a new move. In the nineteenth century, Creationists and fundamentalists looked to Francis Bacon as their philosopher of choice. But it was a particular use of Bacon, one that applied a rather naive realist sense of evidence and empiricism.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it is secular philosophers of science Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, opponents in life, who Creationists have turned to in their attempt to make their ideas seem as “scientific” as possible. This use appears particularly ironic given that both Popper and Kuhn — for all their disagreements and disputes — were both concerned with differentiating pseudo-science from science.

But is it an ironic use? Or is the use of these two theorists, so concerned as they were with defining the nature of science, perfectly natural given that this is exactly the debate Creationists — especially those in favor of “Intelligent Design” — are involved in? (Remember too, that the gold standard for mainstream evidence and trust today requires at least the nominal appearance of science and scientific methodology.)

Put in context, then, it seems perfectly rational and even expected that believers in alternative creation stories should turn to philosophers of science in an attempt to justify the why and how of their beliefs to outsiders.

Generally, I have to wonder if their use selective, or if they rigorously and thoroughly apply Kuhn and Popper’s theories to both their own ideas and those of mainstream science? In other words, are they simply trying to “bring down” mainstream science, or are they using these theories to bring rigor to their own approaches? From my reading, their use does appear selective, and does appear to simply be focused on reducing mainstream science to their level (please correct me if I am wrong).

Intelligent Design appears to me to be a “negative” research program, not a positive one. In other words, it defines itself in opposition to mainstream theories of evolution instead of presenting its own, falsifiable theories to explain the evidence. Noting this, Francis Collins points out that evolutionary biology makes predictions, which then work (or don’t). As far as I can tell, Intelligent Design does not do this.

Finally, why have Creationists decided on Popper and Kuhn (as opposed to, say, Quine or Putnam)? I can’t answer this as yet, but it’s an interesting question.

Popper, Kuhn, and Creationism is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

Although there have been sporadic attempts to reverse the policy, it has been considered so successful that the US Office of Science and Technology Policy requested public input on an extension of the rules to all federally funded research. Now, a consortium of US research institutions is putting its weight behind an effort to turn the potential OSTP policy into law.

via Universities, Congress push Open Access Research law.

Open access is not without its challenges (note: putting publishers out of business is not one of them), but it’s incredibly useful. I’d love to see this kind of policy extended beyond science and into other fields as well (although most other fields do not receive the kind of federal money that science does).

Should mandatory open access be extended to all federally funded research? is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

Why then is it that modern Protestant evangelicals appear to struggle with accepting science today? Why does this struggle emerge especially around biology, particularly evolution? And why have many evangelicals turned to approaches like “Intelligent Design,” which instead of replacing science with religion, instead seeks to co-opt science within terms acceptable to Protestant evangelicalism?

These are the questions I was considering today while discussing sociology and science, and considering how the nature of certain kinds of evidence and theory influences its acceptance and utility by different social groups. (For more, see, e.g., Religion and Science: Beyond the Epistemological Conflict Narrative, by John Evans and Michael Evans.)

Let’s consider Protestant fundamentalists, who generally consider the Bible literally true (despite problems of translation, changes in fundamentalist interpretations over time, and other difficulties). This is the group, one would expect, who might well have the most objections to science, and indeed when it comes to geological sciences and evolution, they do.

But interestingly, most Christian fundamentalists see no conflict with other kinds of science (chemistry, for example), and are typically — despite what one might extrapolate from Young Earth Creationists or geo-centrists, for example — quite happy to accept many forms of modern science and technology.

Evangelicals — who take the Bible less literally than the fundamentalists, but otherwise share many values — have even fewer quibbles with mainstream science, but do tend still to object specifically to the concept of Darwinian evolution. They object so strongly, and yet otherwise consider science so important, that they have struggled to create and teach their own theory of “Intelligent Design” to account for the empirical data scientists have accumulated.

But why is it evolution, and not heliocentrism or photosynthesis, both of which draw from scientific theories which organize and explain empirical data, which has attracted such vehement opposition from evangelicals and fundamentalists?

First, I think evolution, and especially the apparent “randomness” of mutations that leads to change (even if natural selection itself is far from random), generates a kind of anti-materialist repugnance that sees in it a threat to the moral order. If our existence owes as much to chance as anything else, does this not threaten the role of the divine in our lives and, perhaps more importantly, does this not threaten or status as the elite of the world? If we as humans came to exist in the same manner as every animal on Earth, what right do we have to claim an immortal soul?

Second, Protestantism comes from a tradition that values evidence and observation, but looks suspiciously at over-abstract concepts and trust in elites. Thus, evangelicals are wary of science that relies on abstractions, but are fine with science that is strongly connected with observable events. We can see and experience a chemical reaction, but we cannot see or directly experience macro-evolution over millennia.

So why is evolution a target? It is abstract. It is difficult to observe directly, and thus seem to require trusting in scientific elites. (Both of these have historically been issues for Protestantism generally.) It is threat to the established order of things. It feels wrong.

In short, it is less about the truth of the matter than it is about values.

Does this same kind of analysis apply to conservative resistance to climate change research? How many of those who do not believe that the Earth’s climate is being impacted by human activity are evangelical or fundamentalist Protestants? I’m not sure of the answers to these two questions, but I am curious.

Science and Protestantism: why is evolution a target? is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

In the world of scientific ethics, though, it isn’t so much who funds research–it’s a given that someone, potentially with some agenda, is doing the funding–but rather whether or not the source of funding is made public in an open and honest manner.

That, I think, is the real message in Greenpeace‘s investigate research (yes, Greenpeace has an agenda, too, but it’s pretty clear what it is):

A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil company as the paymaster of global warming sceptics in the US and Europe.

The environmental campaign group accuses Kansas-based Koch Industries, which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines, of funding 35 conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators. Between them, Greenpeace says, these groups and individuals have spread misinformation about climate science and led a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels.

via US oil company donated millions to climate sceptic groups, says Greenpeace | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Does this kind of relationship suggest problems with opponents of global climate change? Not necessarily, I think–if their arguments are valid and their research good, it doesn’t matter who funds them. Still, since I can’t easily replicate their research and thus have to take a great deal on trust, a failure to reveal the potential conflict of interest is concerning, I think, and suggests an equally potential for improper bias.

Does the funding of anti-climate change groups by Koch Industries invalidate their position? is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

It’s a joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL), a consortium of libraries from 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

The training course is aimed at librarians in developing countries, but most of the information is based on U.S. copyright law for the time being. According to the “objectives” on the site, it seeks to provide training on:

• copyright law in general
• the aspects of copyright law that most affect libraries
• how librarians in the future could most effectively participate in the processes by which copyright law is interpreted and shaped.

Even though the training materials are intended for librarians, the site provides a useful background for anyone interested in copyright law. Recommended.

Copyright for Librarians: free and useful training is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

As institutions of higher learning seek ways to economize by eliminating and devaluing the spaces of learning that have been so central to “the University,” they are coming to resemble exactly what Dan Brown sees in them — exchange sites of information, marketplaces easily replaced by much cheaper flows of information accessed on the internet. As they pack more students into lecture halls and fill the rosters of on-line classrooms, universities save billions of dollars in the short run, but diminish the value of their degrees.

via academhack » Blog Archive » Technology and Affordable Education.

If universities continue like this, the only value they have to add (over cheaper alternatives) is the “approved” stamp of a recognizable brand. But this will only last so long until their cuts cheapen the brand and alternative competitors begin to increase their own brand value.

Most faculty recognize this. Most students do too. Even most university administrators have a sense of this, but feel like there is little they can do in the face of constant budget cuts and crises. Well, what else specifically can those who actually set university policy actually do in the face of economic crisis and state budget cuts?

Perhaps there is not much that can be done except to hold on and evangelize the importance of the university as a public space — and to remember the importance of less-measurable aspects of a university education, like the humanities, when making cuts.

More optimistically, perhaps it doesn’t matter what administrators do. The university has unique attributes — historical and physical — that are not shared by other forms of information sharing. This uniqueness may well make universities as institutions more resilient than we may otherwise expect. I hope so.

Are universities about selling information? is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

Like other media, books will change to adapt to the new readers, and I think this means less non-fiction. Even before the web, all business books — and the majority of non-fiction books — struck me as 1,000-word pamphlets puffed out to book length with heroic amounts of filler. So if some books are forced to condense to keep our attention, so much the better.

via Books Are Becoming Fringe Media – GigaOM.

Although I disagree with the implication that all book-length works are dying, I do think he has an excellent point: most non-fiction could stand some good editing, and could just as easily be condensed to article length (or, at least, a series of articles). I made a similar point previously, when I suggested that historians need to stop obsessing over writing books.

But if he’s suggesting that book-length fiction is dying, he’s wrong, I think. I just don’t see short stories winning out over novels — and his data doesn’t support this either, even as he draws the conclusion that novels, like non-fiction books, are now fringe media:

As for fiction, there will always be an audience for people who know how to tell good stories. According to Nielsen BookScan, sales of non-fiction books fell 7 percent in 2009, while adult fiction rose 3 percent. There may well be a home for fiction in a world where the web takes up an ever larger portion of our mind share, but novels — like books and e-readers in general — will have to fight their way back from the fringe.

Online reading cuts into TV time, not time that would otherwise be spent reading novels for pleasure. On the other hand, non-fiction reading (perhaps excepting autobiographies and similar pleasure reading?) is a business-like activity, and competes with research, business meetings, email, newspaper articles, and other, shorter and more focused writing. In today’s marketplace of ideas, shorter wins.

Are books — electronic or not — becoming "fringe media"? is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

Second Life always seemed to be the darling of traditional organizations — companies or universities — who seemed to like that it recreated “real space” online, unlike other online approaches (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) that required new ways of thinking and interacting.

Now, finally, these organizations are beginning to realize they might need to reconsider:

Some colleges that have built virtual classrooms in Second Life—the online environment where people walk around as avatars in a cartoonlike world—have started looking for an exit strategy.

The virtual world has not lived up to the hype that peaked in 2007, when just about every day brought a new announcement from a college entering Second Life.

via After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Interestingly, the comments from educators in the Chronicle comments are generally quite supporting of Second Life, and many say virtual worlds are effective teaching environments, and criticize opponents as simply not understanding Second Life sufficiently.

Fair enough. Any technology, even one that attempts to recreate physical space via keyboards, mice and screens, has a learning curve. But I just don’t see a learning curve as being why Second Life hasn’t “made it,” beyond die-hard fans (who do seem to love it). Perhaps it’s the “griefers” and the anonymity, or the lock-in to a single vendor and their technology.  Perhaps there’s something else. But, unfortunately or not, Second Life simply hasn’t succeeded. It’s out of step with a Web 2.0 world.

To succeed, I think, you need to get buzz with the early adopters of tech. These are the people who will advocate for you and help you innovate — but they won’t make your product a success by themselves. You also need to make your value clear — and not by explaining it — to newer adopters who may not be as “into” technology. Everyone needs to see “what’s in it for them,” as it were.

Perhaps a more successful approach would be to leverage Facebook’s app infrastructure and build a more limited “virtual world” in that space. Maybe Linden Labs can even port Second Life into this environment. But regardless, universities need to reconsider their approaches now, and they need to look outside of their own comfort zone to do it.

Wait, Second Life still exists? And universities still use it? is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.

First, of course, there’s Barbri, the king of bar prep. Cost? $3,600. Benefits? Barbri course materials, books, 9 weeks of classes meeting 4 hours per day for 5-6 days per week. Classes — which may be live or may be on DVDs, both done in classrooms — cover the Multistate component (the MBE), essay portions, and the California Performance Test. Plus, of course, the knowledge going into the exam that you did what most everyone else there did to prepare, and didn’t cheap out on inferior classes.

Second, there’s the queen of test prep, Kaplan, whose PMBR “California Complete Bar Review Class” costs $3,500 for the in-person prep, or $3,150 for the online only course. Kaplan covers everything, including the California-specific portion of the exam — except as of today, I can’t find any indication that California classes will actually be offered near me. In other words, other than the MBE-only portion — which is offered — this isn’t a realistic alternative.

Third, moving to online-only options, there’s MicroMash from Thomson Reuters. It too covers all aspects of the MBE and California exam, but all instruction is online, and focused on outlines over lectures and computer-assisted teaching. The cost is significantly less than Babri, at $1,590 for the complete review program. Other benefits depend on learning style — MicroMash is self directed instead of lecture based, and does not require commuting to a central location and sitting there. Analysis and assistance with essay prep is also part of the program. (MicroMash and Barbri are both owned by Thomson Reuters, incidentally.)

Fourth, there’s a distinctly different approach: BarMax, the most expensive app in the Apple App Store ($999). It covers the MBE and California-specific topics, and includes both outlines and audio lectures.  Rather like MicroMash, it focuses of computer-assisted instruction, with a focus on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform (but it also includes printable materials). BarMax includes essay prep, with sample essays and answers, but does not seem to have a review or analysis portion included, although it does include email support from “Harvard-educated lawyers.” You can even rent an iPod Touch with a refundable deposit if you need one. Reviews have been positive, but the company is new on the scene, and its approach is less well-tested than the above, more-established options.

(There might be a few more options to choose from, but these seem to be the main choices. Did I miss any good alternatives?)

So which one is right for me? I’m still deciding. For an update on my final choice, see: The bar approaches: MicroMash vs. BarMax.

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Preparation for the California bar exam is from in propria persona, © 2010 by Kristopher Nelson. Want to republish? Get permission. Want to quote? That's fair use.