General
Yesterday, I went to an EFF party and then to Kate's Harikuyo party in Berkeley. That was fun. I sat next to a woman who was playing an artistic game in which someone draws a letter and then you (the player) have to draw things which turn the letter into something interesting. It's essentially a test of artistic creativity.
So her friend kept giving her Roman letters -- which she did a nice job with -- and I decided to throw her a challenge by drawing some non-Roman letters (from the Greek, Hebrew, and Cyrillic alphabets). Sure enough, she did an excellent job with them. Michelle theorized that it's not actually harder to turn letters from a foreign alphabet into art than it is to do the same with own's own alphabet; that seemed surprising to me, somehow.
Capital sigma: a bowtie. Shin: an erupting volcano. Capital omega: a neuron (releasing neurotransmitters into a synapse). And so on. I forgot what she did with the aleph, but all of her work was very impressive.
I stayed over in Berkeley and then went to Berkeley Bowl in the afternoon on my way back to San Francisco. There, I ran into Sumana and Leonard! The former had just taken the CBEST, and showed me a notice which prohibited her from disclosing any part of the test to anyone else (presumably including that notice, which reminds me of one of the things I disliked about the Linuxcare severance agreement which I have yet to sign).
Americans have such a compulsion to follow directions printed on stickers and signs and warning labels! It's so bad that we can actually believe that shrinkwrap licenses create valid contracts, which is complete nonsense.
On the other hand, CBEST claims that test takers have already agreed to a variety of rules, including a non-disclosure agreement, before they even arrive at the testing center. Can this be true? Wouldn't Sumana have heard about it if it were?
