Thread: Political correctness gone mad in UK

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Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-English pupils
Last updated at 10:27am on 13th October 2006

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Codie Stott: The 14-year-old schoolgirl was arrested for racism and spent three-and-a-half hours in police custody
A teenage schoolgirl was arrested by police for racism after refusing to sit with a group of Asian students because some of them did not speak English.

Codie Stott's family claim she was forced to spend three-and-a-half hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers.

The 14-year-old - who was released without charge - said it had been a simple matter of commonsense and accused the school and police of an over-the-top reaction.

The incident happened in the same local education authority where a ten-year-old boy was prosecuted earlier this year for calling a schoolfriend racist names in the playground, a move branded by a judge "political correctness gone mad."

Codie was attending a GCSE science class at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, when the incident happened.

The teenager had not been in school the day before due to a hospital appointment and had missed the start of a project, so the teacher allocated her a group to sit with.

"She said I had to sit there with five Asian pupils," said Codie yesterday.

"Only one could speak English, so she had to tell that one what to do so she could explain in their language. Then she sat me with them and said 'Discuss'."

According to Codie, the five - four boys and a girl - then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher.

"I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'."

Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest.

"They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewellery, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken," said Codie. "It was awful."

After questioning on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offence, her mother Nicola says she was placed in a bare cell for three-and-a-half hours then released without charge.

She only returned to lessons this week and has been put in a different science class.

Yesterday Miss Stott, 37, a cleaner, said: "Codie was not being racist." "The reaction from the school and police is totally over the top and I am furious my daughter had to go through this trauma when all she was saying was common sense. "

"She'd have been better off not saying anything and getting into trouble for not being able to do the work."

Miss Stott, who is separated from Codie and her 18-year-old brother Ashley's father, lives with her partner Keith Seanor, a 36-year-old cable layer, in Walkden.

School insiders acknowledge that at least three of the students Codie refused to sit with had recently arrived in this country and spoke little English.

But they say her comments afterwards raised further concerns, for example allegedly referring to the students as "blacks" - something she denied yesterday.

The school is now investigating exactly what happened before deciding what action - if any - to take against Codie.

Headteacher Dr Antony Edkins said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark by one student towards a group of Asian students new to the school and new to the country."

"We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards people and pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

Fewer than two per cent of pupils at Harrop Fold come from an ethnic minority.

It had the worst GCSE results in the entire Salford LEA last year with just 15 per cent of pupils achieving five good passes including English and maths, a third of the national average.

Since being placed in special measures, Ofsted inspectors say it has improved, not least as a result of Dr Edkins's "outstanding" leadership.

Salford was at the centre of a storm last April after a ten-year-old boy was hauled before a court for allegedly calling an 11-year-old mixed race pupil a 'Paki' and 'Bin Laden' in a playground argument at a primary school in Irlam.

When the case came before District Judge Jonathan Finestein he said the decision to prosecute showed "how stupid the whole system is getting".

But was himself fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders for "feeding a pernicious agenda" that aided the BNP.

The prosecution was eventually dropped.

Last night Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said: "It's obviously common sense that pupils who don't speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers."

"I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time, but it's a sad reflection on the school if they can't deal with it without involving the police."

"A lot of these arrests don't result in prosecutions - they aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say."

Greater Manchester Police denied Codie had been kept in a cell but would not comment further.

"We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards people and pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

Even if we have to throw you thinking children into prison. We will not allow any individual thinking in this skool.

HEY! TEACHER! Leave them kids alone.
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

HEY! TEACHER! Leave them kids alone.
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

Right on vet!

We don't need no education!

I heard this discussed on talk radio. Do you think it is the large level of mercury emissions? something in the water? The proximity to France?

If that was my daughter I would take her out of that school. What were they thinking calling in the police.

Shame on the school system and police for subjecting this young schoolgirl and her family through a frightening ordeal!

I heard this discussed on talk radio. Do you think it is the large level of mercury emissions? something in the water? The proximity to France?

A teenage schoolgirl was arrested by police for racism after refusing to sit with a group of Asian students because some of them did not speak English.

She did not REFUSE to sit with these students. She REQUESTED (apologetically) to the teacher that she be allowed to sit with students who spoke English so she could understand them. If you read further down the article they state this.

I hate these "tag" lines in news articles that distort the facts so the article is more eye-catching. She didn't REFUSE!!! Aaaargh.

Originally Posted by Virginiamama

I heard this discussed on talk radio. Do you think it is the large level of mercury emissions? something in the water? The proximity to France?

ROTFLMAO
PFrance

http://www.operationinformation.com/art ... gram06.htm

The Parents As Teachers Program – Intrusion into the Private Lives of Families

By Amanda Teegarden and Kate Price
September 2006

The Parents As Teachers (PAT) Program is the title of a seemingly benign, ‘voluntary’ home visitation program designed to help young parents of pre-school age children, birth to 5 years of age, make sure their children are ‘healthy’ and ‘ready to learn’ before entering school.

The program targets parents and their pre-school children, ages birth to 3 years.

Sold to young parents through places such as the local public school system, through pediatric visits, Health and Human Services, Head Start, and through referrals of ‘friends’ and neighbors, the program uses intermediaries, called parent educators, to gain access to the home and educate the parent – or rather, re-educate the parent.

Originally aimed at ‘low income’ or ‘disadvantaged families’, the program has moved on to target so-called ‘higher income parents’ who are supposedly ‘intelligent and well-educated’ enough to see the wisdom of input from professionals on early childhood brain development.

A database of information, created and maintained on the family and the child, tracks observations and assessments of the parent, the child, and parent-child interactions.

“Parents as Teachers National Center has (sic) developed a toolkit to assist staff in identifying instruments for use in the screening, assessment, and evaluation of young children and their parents. The toolkit contains 83 measures of child and parent outcomes.”[1]

Outcomes? What outcomes and who decided what they should be? Screening, assessment, and evaluation – sounds like an employment or medical process, doesn’t it?

From their ‘Outcomes Measurement Toolkits’[2] resource pages come toolkit titles such as:

* Evaluating parent-child interaction: Videotaping as a vital data collection method
* The Kempe Family Stress Inventory: A review - Child abuse and neglect
* Assessing and screening preschoolers: Psychological and educational dimensions
* Starting Early Starting Smart Early Childhood Measurement Toolkit

These and others are available from varied sources, such as Administration for Children and Families, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Head Start, Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), The Casey Foundation, and The World Bank.

[Yes, really -“Assessing cognitive development in early childhood”, E.L. Grigorenko & R.J. Sternberg, (1999) Washington, DC: The World Bank].

Apparently parental and child outcomes are very important to quite a few people.

Sold to young parents through places such as the local public school system, through pediatric visits, Health and Human Services, Head Start, and through referrals of ‘friends’ and neighbors, the program uses intermediaries, called parent educators, to gain access to the home and educate the parent – or rather, re-educate the parent.

A Brief History of Parents as Teachers

From Chapter 7 of Brave New Schools, by Berit Kjos:

‘…Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the U.N., said in an address to the Executive Board of UNICEF,

“Until fairly recently, in most societies, the responsibility for child development rested entirely with parents.... This is still largely true, but it is changing... The process of child development has to be the concern of society as a whole--on the national and international level. From the very beginning, the leaders of UNICEF... clearly understood this...."

In 1981, American educators began to implement UNICEF's vision. The Missouri Department of Education launched the first government program to actually tell parents how to raise their children. Under the misleading title, Parents as Teachers (PAT), it was introduced as a voluntary project to help disadvantaged children. That the state mandated PAT for all children in all schools in 1985 came as no surprise.’ (p. 167)’[3]

Note: At the time the above book was written (1992) the Parents as Teachers programs had expanded to 40 states and 7 foreign countries – it is now in all 50 states, Washington DC, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and 8 foreign countries: Australia, Belize, Canada, China, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

‘Parent educators’ (intermediaries) trained from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005 was 6,652.

As of June 2005, there were 3,039 PAT program sites. Oklahoma finally beat Texas at something –Oklahoma has 94 program sites, compared to Texas’ 91 program sites. Click here to see Oklahoma locations: OPAT[4]

Missouri, home to the PAT program, wins the numbers prize with a whopping 564 program sites.

From Charlotte Iserbyt’s the deliberate dumbing down of america (1999) [5]

“An article by Laura Rogers, entitled “In Loco Parentis, Part II – The ‘Parents as Teachers’ program Lives On” was published in the September 1992 issue of Chronicles…. Excerpts from her excellent article follow:

For the uninitiated, the PAT [Parents as Teachers] program was begun in Missouri in 1981, ostensibly for the purpose of curbing the high dropout rate and winning back parental support for the public school system. In 1985, the state legislature mandated that the PAT program be offered to all schools and children in Missouri and since then the PAT program has been proposed in at least forty other states. Simply put, the program pivots on assigning to all parents and children a “certified parent educator.” This state employee evaluates the child (under the guise of educational screening), assigns the child a computer code classification, and initiates a computer file that the state will use to track the child for the rest of his or her life. All of the computer code designations label the child to some degree “at risk,” and there is no classification for “normal.” The state agent conducts periodic home and school visits to check on the child and the family, dispensing gratis such things as nutritional counseling, mental health services, and even food. Schools under the PAT program provide free day and overnight care. The “certified parent” might forbid the biological parents to spank their child, and might prescribe, if the child is deemed “unhappy”, psychological counseling or a drug such as Ritalin. If the parents refuse the recommended services or drugs, the state may remove the child from the home, place him in a residential treatment center, and force the parents to enroll in family counseling for an indefinite period.” (p. 301-302)

The Parents as Teachers National Center is advocating for legislation, which would expand the Parents as Teachers Program and other early childhood development bills.

S.503, the “Education Begins at Home Act”[6] designed ‘to expand Parents as Teachers programs and other quality programs of early childhood home visitation and for other purposes” introduced by Senators Bond (R-MO), Talent (R-MO) and DeWine (R-OH) in March, 2005.

Others to co-sponsor this bill include Senators Clinton (D-NY), Kerry (D-MA), Rockefeller (D-WV), and Stabenow (D-MI) -big clue here now, folks.

Some of the more egregious language in this bill:

"(1) To enable States to deliver services under

Parents as Teachers programs or other quality programs of early childhood home visitation, to pregnant women and parents of children from birth until entry into kindergarten in order to promote parents’ ability to support their children’s optimal cognitive, language, social-emotional, and physical development.

(2) To improve Early Head Start programs carried out under section 645A of the Head Start Act (42 U.S.C. 9840a).

(3) To expand Parents as Teachers programs, or other quality programs of early childhood home visitation, so as to more effectively reach and serve families with English language learners.

(4) To expand Parents as Teachers programs,or other quality programs of early childhood home visitation, so as to more effectively reach and serve families serving in the military."

20 SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act:

(1) ELIGIBLE FAMILY.—the term "eligible family" means—

(A) A woman who is pregnant; or

(B) A parent or primary caregiver of a child who is from birth until entry into kindergarten.

(2) HOME VISITATION.—the term "home visitation" means services provided in the permanent or temporary residence, or in other familiar surroundings, of the individual receiving such services.”

[The House of Representatives has a companion bill, H.R. 3268,[7] also called the “Education Begins at Home Act]

A phone call to Senator Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) office confirmed that S. 503 was referred to the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee and appeared dead.

However, she indicated that it could be re-introduced later. I lodged my concerns – government access to any family with a child in the home; access to any pregnant woman; tracking of children from birth to kindergarten; intruding on family autonomy; unwanted and unwarranted intrusion into U.S. citizen’s homes.

We ask and encourage others to contact their Senators and ask that this dangerous legislation remains ‘dead.’

Senator Jim Inhofe’s Washington DC number is (202) 224-4721

Senator Tom Coburn’s Washington DC number is (202) 224-5754

Click on this link to find your Representative, here.[8]

The Vision of Parents as Teachers reads:

“All children will learn, grow and develop to realize their full potential.”

It is neither the right nor the responsibility of any self-appointed PAT parent educator to correct, usurp, undermine, change, or report any individual’s living conditions, family traditions, teaching styles, parenting style, eating habits, discipline methods, or worldviews. It is neither the right nor responsibility of any PAT staff person to make sure anyone else’s child ‘learns, grows, and develops’ according to prescripted outcomes– it is the parent’s job.

It is a parent’s responsibility and a parent’s right to ‘raise up a child in the way he should go’ – not the States and certainly not ‘professional intermediaries.’

Say “No thanks” to the Parents as Teachers Programs.

Raise your own child.

[1] www.measures.patnc.org/measures/

[2] http://measures.patnc.org/measures/inde ... ch.sources

[3] www.crossroad.to

[4] www.parentsasteachers.org/site/apps/kb/ ... 95089&raw=

[5] www.deliberatedumbingdown.com

[6] http://www.govtrack.us/data/us/bills.te ... s/s503.pdf

[7] http://www.govtrack.us/data/us/bills.te ... /h3628.pdf

[8] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/replook ... e=Oklahoma

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The War Against White Trash
By John Derbyshire

Here is a picture of a 14-year-old English girl named Codie Stott. Here is another picture of Codie. Here is a picture of Codie with her mother, Nicola Stott. And here is a picture of the headmaster (= principal, approximately) of the school that Codie Stott attends.

Now, it is a well-known fact that there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. I certainly would not presume to plumb the depths of these people’s psyches merely by references to the pictures linked to above. It is an odd thing, though, that the impressions of Miss and Mrs. Stott, and of Dr. (as he now is) Edkins, that popped into my mind on seeing those pictures are amply supported by the background material in the surrounding text.

What were those impressions? In the case of the Stotts mère et fille the impression was: "White trash." Dr. Edkin’s picture triggered the response: "Multi-culti enforcer."

"White trash" is of course an unnecessarily harsh expression. "White Anglo-Saxon-Celtic working class" would be kinder and more precise. I am going to go on saying "white trash," though, because

it is less cumbersome,

this is VDARE.COM, whose editors are notorious for forgetting to take their diversity-sensitivity pills, so that I have good reason to think I shall get away with saying " white trash" un-edited;

and... I feel I have a license to do so, being white trash myself by origins, having been raised among people who looked very much like Codie and her Mum, and likely shared the Stott ladies’ taste in food, entertainment, spectator sports, home furnishings, celebrity gossip, dental-hygienic practices, and the milder sort of vices.
Those coarse, homely faces aside, the evidence for the white-trash status of the Stotts is, as I said, there in the supporting text. Mrs. Stott works as a cleaner. She seems to have misplaced her husband, but she has a live-in boyfriend, whose line of work is cable laying.

Young Codie Stott attends a school named Harrop Fold, of which an official report in December of last year noted the following:

The school is situated in the mainly residential areas of Worsley and Little Hulton which experience significant levels of social and economic disadvantage. The proportion of students eligible for free school meals is more than double the national average. Few students are from minority ethnic groups. Students enter the school having achieved results at primary school that were below average overall, particularly in English. An average proportion have been identified as having learning difficulties and/or disabilities and 20 students have a statement of special educational need.

Plainly a white-trash school in a white-trash neighborhood. The headmaster of that school is Dr. Edkins, the one whose picture seemed to me to have the phrase "multi-culti enforcer" stenciled across it in red-ink block letters.

Dr. Edkins is something of a superstar in his profession. When he was put in charge of Falmer School in Brighton, down on the south coast of England, back in 1999, he was then the youngest headmaster of a publicly-run secondary school anywhere in the nation.

Falmer was, like Harrop Fold, an "underperforming" school in a "disadvantaged" white-trash area. Edkins turned the place around, and was then head-hunted to do the same for Codie Stott’s school. He did such a good job on this second mission, he was praised by British Prime Minister Tony Blair himself. As I said, an educational superstar—a sort of Barack Obama of British ed-biz.

So what on earth has gone wrong at Harrop Fold School that young Codie had to be hustled off to the local Bridewell to have her fingerprints and DNA databased, and to be detained for—depending on whose story you believe—either three and a half or six hours in—ditto ditto—either a cell or a "juvenile unit"?

Well, according to the news reports, Codie was arrested on suspicion of having committed "a Section 5 racial public order offence."

(Just pause to savor that phrase for a moment, and reflect on the exquisite, quivering pleasure it would have given to George Orwell.)

What had happened was, in a science class where the student body was partitioned into "discussion groups," Codie found herself with a group of five Pakistanis. Four of the five were recent immigrants who spoke no English, so the fifth occupied himself by explaining to them, in Urdu, what the teacher required.

Codie found it educationally unrewarding to sit there listening to her five team-mates chattering in Urdu, a language she does not herself speak. She therefore sought out the teacher to ask if she might be re-assigned to some other group, preferably one whose members spoke English.

This mild request had somewhat the same effect on her teacher as Oliver Twist’s request for " More" had on that beadle. All the school’s PC alarms went off simultaneously. According to Codie, the teacher "started shouting and screaming, saying ‘It's racist, you're going to get done by the police.’" The newspaper report continues:

"Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

"A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest.

"’They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewelry, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken," said Codie. ‘It was awful.’

"After questioning on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offence, her mother Nicola says she was placed in a bare cell for three-and-a-half hours then released without charge.

"She only returned to lessons this week and has been put in a different science class."

Now, there are some different versions here. As any schoolteacher, or any parent, knows, it is not always easy to get to the bottom of these matters. Codie’s account has been disputed. It has been alleged that she spoke insults to the Pakistanis, though the worst such allegation I have been able to find is that Codie referred to them as—you might want to take a firm hold of something solid here—"black".

What is not in dispute is that after a pause of several days while the authorities ruminated on the matter, Codie was arrested, taken to the police station, fingerprinted, had her DNA registered, and was given the full attention, for at least three and a half hours, of several bobbies who might have been better employed trying to do something about their district’s appalling levels of burglary, motor vehicle theft, and " violence against the person."

What does Codie’s headmaster, the miracle-working Dr. Edkins, have to say about it all? Quote:

"An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark by one student towards a group of Asian students new to the school and new to the country. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards people and pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

More words to savor—words, in fact, to chill the blood of anyone who believes in liberty and personal autonomy. "We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude…"

It is not often one is offered such a vivid glimpse of the iron fist inside the velvet cliché, of the totalitarian, nation-killing purpose of the whole sweet-talking multi-cultural enterprise. Be caring… be tolerant… or WE WILL SMASH YOU TO PIECES!

One hopes, for her own sake, that young Codie got the message.

I’d like to suggest that this incident was one tiny skirmish in a war that has been underway for some years now, the war I named in my title: the War Against White Trash. On one side in this war there is, of course, the white Anglo-Saxon-Celtic working class of Britain.

That word "working" needs some emphasis. As I have noted, both Mrs. Stott and her boyfriend are gainfully employed. "White trash" is not the name of an unemployable underclass. White-trash-hood is more a state of mind, which a person at almost any economic level can enter into. One of the revelations in Bill Buford’s book about English soccer hooligans (an essential item on the reading list of anyone wishing to explore white-trash culture) is that the white-trash marauders he writes about are in many cases "people with real jobs with real responsibilities: an engineer for British Telecom … a trainee accountant; a bank clerk."

On the other side of this war is a coalition of forces. Some of this coalition’s components just dislike white trash for reasons of esthetics, race prejudice, or class snobbery, and take pleasure in seeing them harried and discomfited. Other, far more sinister, elements are driven by missionary spirit—by the desire to lift up the white trash from their present benighted state to a higher plane of consciousness.

That plane will be one where such paleolithic concepts as " nation" or "race" will have no meaning, where the traditional English contempt for foreigners has been replaced by a world-embracing spirit of universal brotherhood, where both sexes and all "lifestyles" are equal, where the past is viewed with horrified guilt, the present with earnest reforming zeal, and the future with serene complacency, where everyone advances to higher education and thence to symbol-manipulating employment in accountancy, or law, or the ever-swelling government bureaucracy, and nobody has to be a cleaner or cable layer.

Either dirt will cease to accumulate in buildings and cables will lay themselves spontaneously, or else small, grateful, polite brown people from distant places will be shipped in to do this demeaning work at starvation wages.

Dr. Edkins is a warrior in this fight; though which of the above-named motives—the desire to vex white trash, or the desire to embourgeoisify them—is uppermost in his mind, I would not venture to say.

His declaration that he "will not stand for racism in any form" is at least open to reasonable suspicion, though. In any form, Dr. Edkins? Suppose those Pakistani students had complained that Codie Stott made a poor sixth in their group, being unable to converse satisfactorily with them, and that they would be happier and better instructed if a sixth Urdu-speaking classmate could be found. Would the five of them have soon found themselves down at the cop shop having their fingers rolled on ink pads?

Why am I quite certain that the answer is "No"?

But come now, Derb (I hear you cry): Is not Dr. Edkins a hero of our time? Has he not turned around two failing schools, transforming them into places where studious kids of a white-trash background—kids very much like your own younger self—have a shot at learning something and advancing to a comfortable middle-class life among friends and colleagues who know the difference between pointillisme and portamento?

Well, yes; but there are matters of intent and purpose. Mussolini made the trains run on time; Hitler built the autobahns; Mao Tse-tung quashed the warlords.

It is a fine and worthy thing to improve a school. If, having improved that school, you then summon the peelers to stick a Section 5 on some 14-year-old girl because she expressed a preference to be taught in her own language, you have revealed yourself to be a vindictive ideologue who holds the tenets of ideological multiculturalism more precious than the ancient liberties of the English.

You have revealed yourself, in fact, as a person who wants the white trash smacked down good and hard, and their politico-cultural sentiments at least intimidated to silence, at best outlawed.

There are a lot of such people. A few weeks ago, in a different web magazine, I passed some remarks about the recent history of America’s political parties in relation to the Civil Rights movement. I got many emails from readers chastising me for not having said how disgraceful Richard Nixon’s "Southern strategy" was—how simply appalling it was for him to go trawling after the votes of racist Southern whites as he had done, after those people had deserted the Democratic Party (or perhaps more precisely, after it had deserted them).

The implication of all these emails was that the votes of white Southerners in the 1960s and 1970s should not have been sought by any political party—that, in fact, white Southerners should not have been able to vote until they changed their thinking about race. But it is a regrettable fact about our political system that every adult citizen has a vote—even those citizens who prefer their own race to another.

Codie Stott doesn’t even fall into that category. She just wants to get school science instruction in her own language.

When she is a little older, she may perhaps reflect on how odd it is that after forty years of angry controversy, after the transformation of entire English towns and city districts into simulacra of Karachi and Dhaka, after race riots and jihadist bombings—after all that, illiterate (in English, at any rate) Muslim South Asian peasants are still pouring into England in numbers apparently uncontrolled, and are being granted courtesies, dignities, and privileges which the native English are denied.

If, after reflecting on this for a while, Codie should come to the conclusion that the land of her ancestors has gone drooling, gibbering mad, who will say she is wrong?

Not me.

John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. His most recent book, Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra, was reviewed here in July.