Number 2 Pencil

The unfunny world of "situation comedies"

NBC has a new show called Teachers, and if you were hoping it would be a laugh riot, well, you'd be wrong:

We just finished viewing the episode. The only joke that I found amusing was when the stereotypically clueless principal told the buxom newly-hired teacher to "Draw the curtain on the burlesque show," as a way of saying "cover-up your cleavage." As for the rest, I offer-up this prayer to one of the Dark Lords Of Network Television:

O'Dark Prince Of The Peacock Network, Please preserve us from this dumb, cliché-filled, poorly-written, poorly-acted, and unfunny program masquerading-as-comedic-entertainment. If it be your will, make the Nielson Families both blind and apathetic to such idiocy, so that the ratings stay low and result in its swift and just cancellation.

Amen.

The Education Wonks link to quite a few other negative reviews. Even the positive reviews don't sound all that encouraging - who needs a "Boston Public with a laugh track"? It's my impression that to really capture the absurdity of the classroom/school experience, you need black humor and surreality (a la Election, Heathers, or Ferris Beuller), not laugh tracks.

Butterflies for the bee

Geography whiz-kids head to the Central Michigan U campus for some healthy competition - and a shot at a $25,000 college scholarship

Steven Townsend will be nervous tomorrow. As he steps onto the campus of Central Michigan University, stomach butterflies will multiply into bats while he psychs himself up for the 2006 Michigan Geographic Bee. "I will be trying to hope I do well," Townsend said.

As he waits for his name to be called, then steps before the microphone, Townsend will wish hard for a state geography question. That is his specialty. His dad will cheer him on. Townsend, a Meads Mill Middle School seventh grader, said he doesn't really have a particular weakness.

Don't believe him? Take a look at his credentials.

Anyone who reads atlases for fun is a cool kid in my book.

To have and to hold

Part of what's keeping me away from N2P is wedding planning. I'm making sure that everything is scheduled, arranged, and paid for, and this has had a bit of an impact on my time. However, the alternative is certainly ugly:

We can never stress this enough: Don't cheat people you owe out of money for your wedding. A perfectly planned wedding in Swaziland was horribly interrupted because a private investigated was looking for something his client wanted back...the wedding rings. It turns out that the groom bought the wedding rings with a check that bounced. So, mid-ceremony the PI Hunter Shongwe went in and repossessed the wedding rings at the very point when they were to exchange vows with the disputed jewelry.

It's quite possible AmEx will be tracking me down by May, so - ssshhhh! - don't tell them where I'll be.

Goth now, goth forever?

Amusingly, the future lasting effects of the goth culture is only now being researched:

It's every parent's nightmare. Their apparently well-adjusted child suddenly comes home with hair the colour of a coalface, a face whiter than anything made by Dulux, and announces, "Mummy, I'm a goth." However, according to a new study, parents of goths will probably end up boasting about their son/daughter the doctor, lawyer or bank manager. That is the surprising finding of Sussex University's Dunja Brill, whose doctorate in media and cultural studies looked at people with funny hair and eyeliner in London, Brighton and Cologne, and who is herself a former goth.

"Most youth subcultures encourage people to drop out of school and do illegal things," she says. "Most goths are well educated, however. They hardly ever drop out and are often the best pupils. The subculture encourages interest in classical education, especially the arts. I'd say goths are more likely to make careers in web design, computer programming ... even journalism."

Goth began in the 1970's It's interesting to speculate about what today's Hot Topic shoppers will do in the future, and there are an awful lot of adult/former goths to interview today. What are we doing? Did we continue to be geeks with lots of black t-shirts and weird tastes in music, like yours truly?

So perhaps parents shouldn't be too worried that a new generation of goths is cropping up again. There's a goth couple on Coronation Street. Hosein's bands include Black Wire, who wear black eyeliner, winklepickers and sound a lot like the Sisters of Mercy, although they had never heard them until they started rifling through his record collection. For some goths - who run T-shirt businesses or enterprises such as Whitby's biannual Gothic festival - goth can become a livelihood as well as a way of life. But most simply drop back into the mainstream.

Parents should not worry about goth just for the sake of worrying about goth. Researchers and psychologists who have far more experience and knowledge than I note that incidents of teenage violence are much more highly related to parental abuse, substance abuse, and lack of community support than to music or makeup choices.

Delivering a win - and a baby

A surprise delivery for one teen from New Mexico:

It was on a bumpy bus ride home from a basketball game in Questa that 18-year-old Kayla Alire started to have terrible stomach pains.

The senior point guard at Mesa Vista High in Ojo Caliente didn't realize she was experiencing labor pains. She had just played in her last basketball game Feb. 18, a game in which she sank two 3-pointers.

Two hours later, she was at Española Hospital in labor. An hour after arriving, she gave birth to a 6-pound, 4-ounce baby boy no one knew was coming.

I...just...wow.

Dad commits a serious fault

Talk about setting a bad example:

A retired soldier is on trial in France on charges that he drugged the tennis rivals of his children 27 times from 2000 to 2003, a report said. Christophe Fauviau, 46, is accused of unintentionally causing the death of Alexandre Lagardere, 25, by administering anti-anxiety drug Temesta.

Lagardere died in a July 2003 crash while driving home after losing a match to Fauviau's son, Maxime. Authorities say Lagardere had traces of the anti-anxiety drug in his system and may have fallen asleep at the wheel, Sky News reported.

The victim, like other opponents of Fauviau's children, complained of weakness and tiredness during the match and slept for two hours afterward. Prosecutors claim Fauviau drugged six opponents of his son and 21 opponents of his 15-year-old daughter, Valentine.

And we thought murderous hockey dads were bad news.

Wish you were here, wish I wasn't

Parents often urge their kids to go out and see the world. Doesn't look like too many parents are encouraging their kids to travel here, though:

Last week I reported on the contest being sponsored by the North Dakota National Guard which is offering high school students 540 all-expenses paid trips to the Peace Garden State.

So far, fewer than thirty kids have answered the call, and the deadline for entering is February 28. The North Dakota National Guard is offering 10 students from each state and four US territories the opportunity to come to the state in honor of the 200th anniversary of Lewis & Clark's return trip through there.

C'mon, students! Where's your spirit of adventure?

Last year, spam mail. This year, spam roses.

Talk about setting the bar too high. This guy's gonna have a few scary guys waiting for him in a dark alley, after they all get dumped by their girlfriends:

If any female juniors at Cypress Bay High School weren't aware of classmate Paul Kim - they know him now. The 17-year-old junior ordered 500 red roses and had them delivered to nearly all his female classmates on Valentine's Day.

A card attached to the roses said, "To all the lovely ladies of 2007, here's wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day. Affectionately, Paul Kim."
advertisement He said he used money he had been saving since his birthday in December to pay for the roses, which cost about $900.

So, will one of the girls who didn't get a rose allege discrimination, or will one of the girls who did get one claim sexual harassment?

If Cupid were a cat

Happy Valentine's Day to all, from me and my big-footed baby!

And as a bonus, all plates get licked clean!

German restaurant bans little stinky critters that make a lot of noise and disrupt the evening dinner hours:

A German restaurant has drawn protests and plaudits for refusing to give a dinner reservation to a mother who wanted to bring her two small children. Dogs would be welcome, it said, but "here, children are not allowed in the evening."

Jana Schmid, 32, wanted to celebrate a christening with five adults and two small children at the "Boheme" restaurant at Augsburg in southern Germany, the only non-smoking eatery in the area. "We are always being told that Germany must do more for children," she told the weekly Bild am Sonntag.

"And then we are told they are not welcome, all they do is whine and disturb people. It would be unthinkable in countries such as Italy and Spain."

Perhaps dogs aren't as well-behaved in Italy and Spain - you know those German hounds tend to be very disciplined.

I'm sure this has some parents (other than the ones quoted here) infuriated, but I can't help giggling at the thought at fancily-dressed diners breathing a sigh of relief at the lack of loud kiddies in the place, only to be seated next to a beagle who howls along with the violinists.

Problem solving in the 21st century

Warning, teachers - sometimes, you may not want to know:

(Thanks to Brian and everyone else who sent this to me!)

A rose by any other name...

Heh.

Sounds like the Sex Ed teacher is out of a job

I'm sure there are those who think that this is perfectly normal and healthy. I'm sure there are also those who find this disgusting and appalling. I think that these adolescents are merely experiencing the kind of charmingly-narcissistic curiosity that adolescents have always experienced. I just wonder why one of the supposedly-best high schools in NYC tolerates tons of public displays of that curiosity, as though its brightest students can't be taught, or expected, to control their hands and tongues during the school day.

I also wonder how these kids are going to do later on when the world/their professors/their bosses are both unimpressed by and uninterested in their blabbing to complete strangers about their sexuality, and inform them that no matter how stressful the day gets, they don't get to hold a "cuddle puddle" in the break room. Charming narcissism gets tiring after a while.

Their punishment: Being forced to take the SAT

Perhaps something is lost in the translation here:

A highly unusual break-in at a grammar school in Klæbu resulted in a bit of mental exercise. The burglar(s) did not appear to be out after material gain. Instead of stealing, the intruder(s) sat down and began to solve the math problems intended for third grade students, newspaper Adresseavisen reports.

According to local law enforcement officials a good job was done and all of the problems were solved correctly.

There has been nothing reported missing or stolen from the school building and it remains a mystery how the intruder or intruders gained access to the school.

I love the fact that the police, and the reporter, point out the burglar(s) answered the math problems correctly. Would they face more charges if they hadn't?

Munch munch munch...

Good news: I've lost 10 pounds so far, and only have 10 left to go before the wedding.

Bad news: I just bought 8 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies.

Evil, I tell you. EVIL.

Taking a bite out of politics

You know, I really, really tried to resist the urge to report on this story. You know, about the vampire who's running for governor of Minnesota as part the Vampyres, Witches and Pagan party? The one who was promising impalements for terrorists? Whose webpage mentions his devotion to the Dark Lord (no, not Karl Rove)? Who's so obnoxious that even the real vampires and witches are pointing out he's insane and disgusting? Funny as it is, there was just no way I could link this story to an edublog, of all things.

Then I saw that he'd been brought up on charges from Indiana of escape and stalking. The article mentions that part of his platform featured, "an emphasis on education," so I think we can now all agree that this has, officially, become a meaningless phrase.

Oh, and his wife? Recently got fired. From her job as a school bus driver. Apparently the powers-that-be decided she wasn't quite the ideal "role model" for kids. I feel for her, though. She's gotta figure out another way to raise money for bail.

Skirting the issue

Let's all be thankful the rude "ethnicity" teacher from last week didn't have this guy in his class. Or would that skirt be okay for certain "ethnicities", as a Broncos jersey apparently isn't?

Americans Idolizing themselves

I probably won't get much of a chance to blog over the next couple of days, but there's one thing I just have to get off my chest.

Anyone who thinks that American students suffer from a lack of self-esteem, or thinks that that they need to be built up and told that they are special, or thinks that they need to more coddling and shielding from the rough world outside, should be tied to a chair and forced to watch last night's American Idol premiere over and over again.

I mean, good God. There were stadiums full of teenagers who waited in line for days for their chance to get on TV and in front of a group of tough judges, and the majority of them could. Not. SING. Many of them had no talent whatsoever, but they were not shy about barging into a room and warbling horribly in front of cameras. There were oodles of fascinating mental problems on display in those rooms last night, but low self-esteem wasn't one of them. One young fellow sang like your maiden aunt crossed with a parrot; when he got booted, his granny stormed inside to confront Simon. Another young lassie cursed during her song - seriously, they had to bleep out a lot of the lyrics - and when she was dismissed, she told them they could kiss her white ass. The interviews with those who were rejected involved more bleeping of nasty words than your average episode of COPS.

Anyone watching this premiere would come away convinced that, if any group of teenagers needs a class in lowering self-esteem - or at least in forcing their self-opinion to conform to reality - it would be American teenagers. I also now think that Simon Cowell should be teaching at schools of education.

Local paper misses chance to demonize goths

Despite two very recent and horrific murders by young men who could be described as "goth", the Herald-Tribune (FL) has a fairly sympathetic article which points out the relative non-violence of the goth scene:

Trouble sometimes brews at Club Heat in Bradenton, a venue law enforcement knows well. But never on Goth night...

"It's one of the friendliest crowds around," bartender Jeremy Hale, 24, said. "It's probably the only night we've never had a fight."

Goth, a little-understood and hard to define subculture, has cropped up on the news and in everyday conversation after six brutal Manatee County murders. Police and neighbors have described the two murder suspects as Gothic. Now, young people in the Gothic community worry they will be stereotyped as loose cannons and potential killers...

Richard Henderson Jr., a 20-year-old Manatee man known to wear black and paint his nails black in a Goth style, is accused of killing his family at their Myakka City home with a metal pipe on Thanksgiving. And on Sunday, Clifford Davis, 19, a black-clad man with gothic tattoos including a sword across his back, killed his mother and grandfather in Bradenton, authorities say...

Elizabeth Bird, a University of South Florida professor who specializes in pop culture, said young people into the Goth subculture might feel alienated from the mainstream, but are not necessarily troubled or dysfunctional. She said being Goth doesn't translate into violence. "Your average sports fan is probably more violent," Bird said. "If a member of a basketball team does something bad, we don't say that's because he's on the basketball team."

Well, actually, some goths would say that. But the point is well taken.

Posted by kswygert at 09:38 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Should old job positions be forgot/and never brought to mind?

Happy New Year to everyone (yes, I'm running late)!

I don't know if you all got good news to ring in the new year, but I sure did. I found out right before Christmas that I've been promoted to Senior Psychometrician! Woo-hoo.

Of course, that means less time for the blog...but I'm determined to keep it running, even if I can only put up one or two posts a day. It's frustrating to not have as much time for N2P as I would like, but I've got to focus on what pays the bills.

Dancing and eating for free

Yet another argument for having, as Dave and I plan to, a really small wedding:

As Tovah Choudhury leafs through an album of photos from her wedding last summer, she recalls the friends and relatives at her reception streaming onto the dance floor of Atlanta's InterContinental Hotel -- all familiar faces. Then she comes to the image of a blonde in a sundress and a gray-haired man in a tuxedo and remembers how they danced and the woman laughed and whispered into the man's ear.

And who might they be? Ms. Choudhury hasn't the faintest idea. The pair were wedding crashers -- the bane of a bride's parents, who traditionally foot the bills for the reception and aren't in the mood to subsidize freeloaders. But Ms. Choudhury sees it another way: "I was kind of proud our wedding was such a happening place" that it attracted uninvited guests, she says -- hence the photo of the phonies that now has a place in her wedding album.

Large, unguarded social gatherings have tempted the uninvited for centuries. But, like it or loathe it, the practice of freeloading at nuptial celebrations seems to be on the increase, thanks, at least in part, to "Wedding Crashers," the Owen Wilson-Vince Vaughn comedy that hit movie theaters in July.

I'm with the Farker who planned to have attack dogs in attendence at his reception, with each invited guest having brought a dirty sock for the dog to sniff and keep on file.

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!

Be sure to join the politically-incorrect brigades watching A Charlie Brown Christmas tonight at 8 pm on ABC:

It's been forty years since A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on network television, instantly becoming one of the most popular holiday specials of all time. Written by Charles M. Schulz, with Bill Melendez directing and Lee Mendelson as Executive Producer, the show won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program, despite initial concerns about the show's leisurely pace, jazz soundtrack, religious theme, and use of children's voices. In December 2005, A Charlie Brown Christmas was named "Best Christmas Special," by TV Guide.

InfoPlease notes that:

Even Schulz admitted that he was probably the only person who could have gotten A Charlie Brown Christmas made. Television executives hated it from the start.

It was criticized as being too religious—Linus quotes straight from the King James Bible (Luke 2:8-14). It was criticized for featuring contemporary jazz, an offbeat choice for a cartoon. It was criticized for not having a laugh track. It was criticized for using the voices of real children (except for Snoopy, who was voiced by animator Melendez).

But it was an instant hit with viewers and reviewers alike.

I'm sure the Llama Butchers aren't the only ones with tears in their eyes when Linus finishes his speech.

Update: Great article from 2000 - the year Charles Schulz died - here. Hugh Hewitt's site also has a recent article by Mary Katharine Ham, who notes, "Thank goodness Shulz made it in 1965. That baby would be a Veggie Tales straight-to-video these days."

Halloween and cats - A photo album

The sparkly wig, suitable for metal shows on Halloween:

The pregnant redneck getup, which pretty much guaranteed that I will never again wear (a) white lace or (b) dark wigs (the camera phone wasn't doing a great job):

One of the cats that used to belong to some friends of mine, now available with his best buddy at the Devon (PA) Petsmart. More information on him here.

Finally, The Last Word Bookshop in West Philly has not one but two store cats. One is shy and babyish; the other is a ham who likes to sleep in the front window:

At some schools, you'd need witchcraft to make test scores rise

A Utah teacher was fired in 2003 over concerns about witchcraft, and the whole matter is now coming out in the civil trial:

Some community members in Monroe were concerned that Erin Jensen might believe in witchcraft, witnesses testified Thursday, and at least one janitor wondered why the English teacher resisted having her classroom cleaned.

The talk grew, with the cleaning staff saying that the classroom windows were covered with black paper and someone even claiming that Jensen "kept blood in the fridge." Finally, after receiving several calls between them, two Sevier School District board members shared what they had been told with Superintendent Brent Thorne.

"We didn't ask him to act on it [the information]," said Carolyn Washburn, one of the board members. Washburn, who left the board in 2004, said she did not take the allegations seriously. But she acknowledged parental concerns that Jensen told her class some people believe in witchcraft were part of the reason she voted to uphold Thorne's decision to fire Jensen.

Minutes from a board meeting about Jensen included the following:

Besides the statements about Jensen's actions at the training seminar, the minutes said: "She also believes in witchcraft and paints her windows in her classroom black. Halloween is her favorite holiday and she doesn't hide the fact she prefers the dark side."

That segment was later taken out as an "inaccuracy", but it's very telling that it was inserted in the first place to describe Jensen, who claims to be of no religion - including not being a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Well, if she's looking for work, there's always Wal-Mart.

A view from the inside - of the skull

If you live anywhere near Philadelphia, run, do not walk to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Franklin Insitute. You HAVE to see it – especially if you have kids who are into science and aren’t skeeved out by the idea of dead bodies. I went last night and it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

That photo on the first page of this link? That’s a real person, as are all the other bodies and body parts shown in the exhibit. You can see more photos of them here.

From the website:

What is BODY WORLDS? Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies, is a first-of-its-kind exhibit in which guests learn about anatomy, physiology, and health by viewing real human bodies, preserved through an extraordinary method called "plastination." The exhibition features more than 200 authentic human specimens, including entire bodies as well as individual organs and transparent body slices. Using the revolutionary process of plastination, the body specimens are preserved with special plastics that enable us to view the many organs and systems under our skin. The exhibit also allows for guests to understand diseases, the effects of tobacco consumption, and use of artificial supports such as knees and hips.

That's right. Lots of dead bodies, all plastinated and in various arrangments - some with just muscles, some with just arteries, some with just bone. Some have all the parts there but have been taken apart and rearranged so you can see everything. One memorable fellow was largely intact except for his skin - which was also plastinated and draped over his right arm like a long coat.

The joys of statistics

Top Ten Reasons to Become a Statistician:

10. Deviation is considered normal.
9. We feel complete and sufficient.
8. We are mean lovers.
7. Statisticians do it discretely and continuously.
6. We are right 95% of the time.
5. We can safely comment on someone's posterior distribution.
4. We may not be normal but we are transformable.
3. We never have to say we are certain.
2. We are honestly significantly different.
1. No one wants our jobs.

All I can say is, #5 has given me plenty of good times as I've used it to flirt discreetly in class (or send naughty emails to female friends in my field).

And on that note, I'll see you guys on Monday - I'll be vacationing in NYC all weekend.

Three in a row

Via LlamaButchers and others, there's a new meme spreading 'round the blogosphere: Three Things. Here's my take on them:

THREE THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND:

1. Why everyone seems to wears jeans or sweatpants all the time.
2. "Anti-war" protests
3. Spinning hubcaps.

THREE THINGS ON MY DESK:

1. A huge jar half-filled with Hershey's Kisses.
2. A photo of my dearly-departed Arizona Mountain Kingsnake
3. Kolen & Brennan's Test Equating

THREE THINGS I’M DOING RIGHT NOW:

1. Waiting on an analyst to give me a calibration dataset.
2. Fighting with SAS to make it give me the boxplots I want.
3. Listening to Meat Beat Manifesto.

THREE THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE:

1. Visit the Galapagos Islands and swim with marine iguanas.
2. Learn how to strike a match with only one hand.
3. Visit a fresh crime scene with a homicide detective (NB: not if the victim is someone I know).

THREE THINGS I CAN DO:

1. Cartwheels.
2. Give a cat a pill, quickly and easily (seriously!)
3. Make linear regression equations understandable to college students.

THREE WAYS TO DESCRIBE MY PERSONALITY:

1. Balanced.
2. Sarcastic.
3. Extroverted.

THREE THINGS I CAN’T DO:

1. Drink tequila.
2. Play chess.
3. Balance a chemical equation.

THREE THINGS I THINK YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO:

1. Me.
2. Lacuna Coil.
3. Someone who's gone to the trouble to read the original source.

THREE THINGS I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO EVER:

1. Commercials.
2. Gangsta Rap.
3. Anyone who prefaces a comment to you with, "You know, I hate to tell you this, but..."

THREE THINGS I SAY:

1. "You have GOT to be kidding me."
2. "Who's my cutest little baby kitty ever?"
3. "If I have to go to one more meeting today, I'm going to kill someone."

THREE THINGS I'D LIKE TO LEARN:

1. Patience.
2. How to tell jokes in public speeches.
3. How to eat chocolate without gaining weight.

THREE BEVERAGES I DRINK REGULARLY:

1. Hot tea
2. Vodka
3. Guinness

THREE SHOWS I WATCHED WHEN YOU WERE A KID:

1. Tom & Jerry.
2. G-Force
3. The Mickey Mouse Show.

THREE THINGS I WISH PEOPLE WOULD LEARN TO DO:

1. Look at the big picture
2. Not be afraid of statistics
3. Look before they leap, especially with respect to romantic partners and traffic intersections

Cinema Kimberly

One reason that I haven't been blogging as much is because my theater attendance frequency has gone up quite a bit.

Two weekends ago I saw both Serenity and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. I fell in love with the crew of Serenity within five minutes, despite never having seen the TV show it was based upon, and now Dave and I are planning on getting a copy of Firefly on DVD and having a marathon.

Corpse Bride, on the other hand, stunk. The plot was much more boring than it should have been, none of the (one-dimensional) characters had any backstory, and there wasn't a memorable song in the entire feature.

Last night I treated myself to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which its creator referred to as, "the first horror movie for vegetarians." It was the kind of movie that doesn't require a review, because if you love W&G, you will absolutely love the movie, and if you don't love W&G, then, what the hell's the matter with you, anyways?

This weekend, Dave and I will be traveling to NYC to see, among other things, Mirrormask. I'd never heard of this until recently and can't believe how gorgeous/dark/mysterious it looks from the trailer.

Sneaking into school

It's "Never Been Kissed" with a twist:

27-year-old Guatemalan man arrested for posing as an 18-year-old Pasco County high school student told authorities he enrolled because he wanted to learn English and get a good education. Josue Oswaldo Ramirez-Mejia was arrested Tuesday and charged with uttering a forged instrument. He was being held on $5,000 bail.

Ramirez-Mejia used forged documents, including a Guatemalan birth certificate stating his birthday as Jan. 3, 1987, to enroll last month at J.W. Mitchell High School, officials said. Someone also posed as his guardian, according to the sheriff's office.

"Everything seemed to be in place," said Jim Davis, an assistant superintendent with the school district. Ramirez-Mejia was a good student and hadn't caused any problems, Davis said.

If he's almost 30 but can pass for 18, I say give him a diploma and let him get on with his life, because he's got things tough enough as it is.

No, doctor, I didn't say I was a pony, I said I was a little horse

Does anyone out there use Advair? Is anyone else suffering from one of its more common side effects, semi-permanent hoarseness?

I'm not getting sick (hallelujah), but I now sound like a three-pack-a-day smoker. While that voice might come in handy when I want to present a racy image, it tends to make me feel self-conscious at work. Has anyone had any luck with lozenges, or anything like that?

Bopping for a good cause

You have to love educators who use the one real weapon that adults have against kids - the power to annoy - to raise money for hurricane relief:

Delone Catholic High School in McSherrystown, Pa., has a fun fundraising program called "Stop the Bop." Suggested by a few members of the student council, the school is playing Hanson's 1996 hit "MMMBop" through the loudspeakers before classes begin, between periods and during lunch. The idea? Annoy students into donating; have them pay to stop the music.

The goal is $3,000, which could be reached if each of the 659 students donates $5. "MMMBop" has been playing since Wednesday, and the school has raised about $2,300 so far...

"Kids have said, 'If I give you a blank check, will you stop this music?' " Cox says. "People are just, like, some people give twenties. You say, 'Thank you very much.' They say, 'No, we just want it to end. Even though it's for a good cause, we just want it to end.'

Next up - the use of Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond songs to raise test scores.

Ms. Cheesy Goth strikes again

Remember how happy I was when I discovered black vodka, and how I said I didn't care if it made me seem like a stereotypical bonehead goth who was into stuff just for the spooky aspect of it?

I'm just getting worse. I just downloaded Tubular Bells, aka the theme from The Exorcist, as my cell phone ringtone, and I can't tell you how happy it makes me. I just love that song. I listened to the album as a kid long before I ever saw the movie, so I don't find it scary.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the fact that my phone will now creep some people out. So if anyone knows where I can download the theme from Halloween for a Samsung camera phone, I'd like that one too.

The answer to California's school troubles?

While drug use, teenage pregnancy, and failing school programs are the factors that negatively affect the American high school graduation rate, the Aussies have a different set of problems:

An Australian high school hopes to stop beach-loving students from bailing out of class by making surfing an approved subject, according to The Associated Press. Byron Bay High School will offer surfing as part of a recreation course that from next year will count toward a high school certificate in New South Wales state.

"You've got students who are at risk of dropping out of school and the school has developed this course as a way to provide a pathway for these students into future employment and keep them connected to education," state Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said.

Only in Australia would a surfing course be suggested as (a) a way to keep kids in school and (b) means to gain meaningful future employment. Perhaps California towns with high waves and low test scores could follow suit?

The Art of being a Barbie doll

Mattel is jumping on the "kids-don't-get-enough-exposure-to-the-arts-these-days" bandwagon (emphases mine):

Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - Who said Lindsay Lohan couldn't get any smaller? The teen starlet's new doll, part of Mattel's My Scene line, is now arriving in a slinky red-carpet gown. Also sold separately: a limo, a dressing room and an ... animated DVD?

Girls used to be able to get a doll's backstory from the back of its box. But that's changing, as more retailers release straight-to-video productions that help introduce new characters—and sell more dolls...

Parents might see the movies as underhanded advertising. But Mattel, which has sold nearly 27 million Barbie films worldwide since 2001, doesn't agree. "Kids see through that," says Rob Hudnut, vice president of entertainment development. "We're trying to fill a void in the education system in teaching kids about the arts."

Uh-huh. If Mattell wants to sell DVDs along with dolls, more power to them. But to claim this is somehow "teaching kids about the arts" is pretty absurd.

Doing good doesn't require looking good

While Alexander Russo suggests that perhaps education reformers aren't generally the best-looking bunch in the world, I say beauty is as beauty does.

Which, to me, means one ugly but sincere reformer pushing for higher standards and better education is worth ten Wonkettes.

(I just want to say to the Education Wonks that I bet they're even better looking in person.)

Mini-vacation, here I come

Ya'll enjoy the next few days of summer; Number 2 Pencil has a little weekend hiatus coming up and will resume on Monday.

If you hear screaming, that'll be me, in the front car of this.

Update: Woo. HOO. It was a bit difficult to keep our eyes open when traveling at 128 miles per hour, but the ride came to an almost complete stop at the crest of the 458-foot hill. The view from there was, as you can imagine, spectacular - and the sheer drop from there wasn't bad, either. It was worth the looong wait to sit in the front car.

Obesity is not the main problem here

The Philadelphia school district is trying to figure out a way to get local students to eat more healthily:

When a Philadelphia school district recently slimmed down its lunch offerings and banned sodas from vending machines, educators hoped the moves would help stem the tide of childhood obesity. But as school officials continued to see an overweight student body, they began to suspect that the real culprit behind the children's weight problems was lurking beyond school walls.

A survey of 600 Philadelphia students found that more than 50 percent of them stop at corner stores on the walk to or from school, spending an average of $2 each day...

School officials find a challenge in providing a solution. While it's easier to regulate the foods kids are served at school, it is much more difficult to keep them away from the corner store. In fact, some nutritionists say it's impossible. Instead, the schools have set up mock corner stores, teaching students how to make healthier choices. Students who put that knowledge to work are rewarded with school supplies and raffle tickets.

I found this link via Big Fat Blog, whose commenters are often well-spoken on the topic of promoting health at any size. Two commenters, though, went off on rants that I thought were particularly amusing:

...when the fat police start going after School District of Philadelphia, I start getting pissed. The district is 80% indigent, about 85% minority (well above if we take out the magnet and Center City schools), and performing below basic skills level in all areas. I feel this edge of latent racism/classism every time I read about the district in the national news. I fail to see why concentrating on obesity has any importance when some of these kids can't read, when some of them live without heat in the middle of February, when I've been to welfare houses that have roaches crawling on the walls and the children alike and that don't have a single piece of furniture...

Well said. Another commenter goes to the point even more bluntly:

Another thing about that little "mock store" -- I'd rather see them teaching kids HOW TO COUNT CHANGE than "how to make healthy choices."

I have had a number of jobs in which I was responsible for hiring cashiers -- and let me tell ya -- I DID keep stats on that, and 80% of the applicants FOR CASHIER POSITIONS did NOT know how to count back change for a $2.29 purchase, even after being SHOWN an example of how to do it correctly...

If they couldn't do it the first time, I SHOWED the applicant HOW to do it, and then gave them another similar question. 80% of APPLICANTS FOR A CASHIER JOB *STILL* could not do it correctly even after being shown how.

That is a skill they SHOULD be teaching in school (at a little "mock store" or HOWEVER...) -- not how to make "healthy food choices" (GRRR).

Both commenters have a point. When students from Philly schools are struggling so hard to master basic skills, was it really a good use of time and resources to call in Penn's mapping experts to figure out how many pizzerias and cheese-steak shops are near the schools?

This would make the AERA conference a whole lot more fun

It's about time - the edu-jargon drinking game:

...here is a list of 24 jargony words to drink by. Special thanks to all of those who played along, and to all those who will hoist a few henceforth. The rules are simple: Each time you hear one of these often-used words from the education world, take a swig of whatever makes you happy...

My favorites: "Differentiated instruction," "Self-directed learning" and "Higher order thinking." My only complaint is the title of the Eduwonk's post. Blenders are for amateurs.

The way to save is to behave

The British government plans to give kids money to be used only in acceptable venues:

Controversial plans to pay teenagers not to be yobs will be introduced across the country after a trial in the West, it was announced yesterday. Children from poor families will get up to £12 a month in pocket money from the Government to spend on sports or cultural activities, or even high street shops. But they risk being stripped of the cash if they get mixed up in crime and anti-social behaviour.

Critics are likely to accuse Ministers of rewarding teenagers simply for behaving well, something they should do anyway. But the Government has been hugely impressed by a project run by Splash-Wiltshire which pioneered the use of discount cards, and believes it helps crackdown on yob culture.

The charity distributes £10 discount cards to vulnerable and poor teenagers which can be used to pay for activities ranging from adventure sports to drama.

It sounds more like a coupon than cash, but if the purpose is to get kids into the sports or drama culture, shouldn't they be sure to give these cards to kids who are at the highest risk; i.e., those who do have criminal problems? I mean, if we want to give those kids another option, why take away that option once the kid gets into trouble?

And what if the kids aren't interested in the coupons, because the lure of being a "yob" is too exciting? Hope the government has another trick up its sleeve.

Harry Potter mania

This weekend, at least, the reading stats were up (good thing that NAEP reading survey took place before this latest installment went on sale):

The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series is getting high marks from Muggle kids across the region, with many having digested the 652-page tome in a single weekend.

"It was the best beginning of any book I've ever read," raved 10-year-old Nathan Kastner of Rockville, sounding like a mini Roger Ebert. "The beginning was so interesting and unexpected. It really leaves you wondering what's going to happen next"...

The first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," released in 1998, became a publishing phenomenon. And just as the characters have grown throughout the series -- in the last installment, Harry was a sometimes surly 15-year-old prone to bouts of self-pity -- so too have its readers. Indeed, many of the Washington area fans interviewed yesterday said they continue to see themselves in the characters of Harry, Ron and Hermione, who are now dealing with tougher classes and more complicated relationships.

At Woodley Gardens in Rockville, where five area swim teams gathered yesterday for the annual B Relay Carnival, copies of "Half-Blood Prince" were everywhere. Even a few parents were spied sneaking peeks at the book between events.

I have been informed, by colleagues of mine here at work who are mothers, and thus are watching their budgets more carefully than I, that I am expected to bring the book in for lending ASAP. Good thing I finished it this weekend. I liked it - but it's definitely different, and I understand why there are some seriously negative reviews on Amazon.com.

A Starbucks Frappucino with a shot of espresso at 11:30 pm is always a good thing

Guess where I was at 12:01 am on Saturday morning?

Yes, I know, I'm a dork. A dork who is only about 3/4 of the way through the book.

Popping the (multiple-choice) question

Heh.

A law student was so bored with his final year paper that he stood up in the middle of the exam and asked his girlfriend to marry him.

Student Edin Smailovic, 29, requested permission to address the rest of the students during an economic law exam at Bijelo Polje University in Montenegro. Examiners gave their permission believing he had a query regarding the paper that was also of importance to the rest of the group.

But after approaching the front of the room he got down on one knee and asked his 26-year-old girlfriend, Edita Bikic, who was also sitting the exam, to marry him.

She said yes.

Had I been teaching when this happened, I don't know that I could have done much; the student could have argued that my syllabus didn't explicitly prevent marriage proposals during exams. I would have been a bit miffed to keep hearing about how "bored" the student was by the exam, though.

My day

If anyone wonders why I've been posting up a storm today, it's because I was worked from home. My skin, which is more sensitive to slights than a Kerry-voting PETA supporter, reacted badly to the sunscreen I slathered on it Sunday. A neck-to-ankles rash didn't keep me home from work yesterday, but I was so uncomfortable in my turtleneck and long sleeves that I figured I'd work from home today and let my skin recover. Thank God for Caladryl.

In addition to the multitude of posts, I had to finish up my talk for the upcoming International Meeting of the Psychometric Society in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Practice talk is tomorow, real talk is next Tuesday at 4 pm (Tilburg time), and I'm fretting away. (The title of my talk is, "A hierarchical linear model approach for modeling item response times on a large-scale certification exam,” should you care).

Staying home today, I reverted to my old graduate schools ways, which was to procrastinate madly through housework. So, in addition to the blogging and the presentation, I washed eight loads of clothes, de-cat-haired the sofas and the rugs, vacuumed the whole house, and cleaned the bathroom. Boy, this place was a sty - and it will revert to styhood by the time I return from my trip, but I suppose that can't be helped. To plagiarize Dave Barry, my fiance, like most men, doesn't notice dirt until it forms clumps large enough to support plant life.

A Sunday of Metal

Yesterday - the Sounds of the Underground tour at Festival Pier in Philly. Dave and I had a great time:

I was representin' for Slayer, thank you very much:

.

Good show, although we left a bit early (after Opeth). I finally got to see Gwar for the first time (no, I didn't stand up front!).

Adding my data

If you blog, be sure to check out MIT's survey of bloggers and blogs by clicking on the image below.

Oddball roundup

Devoted Reader Reginleif uncovered a hysterical exchange over school lunches on a community message board. The discussion starts when a mother asks if it's legal for her to deliver a fresh lunch to her child's school at lunchtime every day, and it's obvious she's not prepared to deal with any questions about her method. (And before you ask - no, the kid doesn't have any life-threatening food allergies.)

Early school bells: The Evil Plan of the Morning People. Slate suggests that letting your cranky night owl teen catch a few more z's is more important than making her get up early for breakfast.

No more skirts! In a desperate attempt to deal with what must be a rash of micro-minis, one British junior high school has decreed that all students will wear full-length trousers as part of their uniforms. Now, if only they'd done something about those ridiculously short shorts I had to wear in gym class, back in 1982.

Turning winners into losers

In my first-ever fiance-submitted link (thanks, Dave!) we have a tale of two youth baseball teams in Ohio.

No one misbehaved. No one broke any rules. But after only a few games, the Columbus Stars have been kicked out of a recreational youth baseball league in Canal Winchester.

The players, ages 11 and 12, were deemed too good.

On May 9, the Stars beat the Red Sox, 18-0. Two weeks later, the Stars also beat World Harvest, 13-0. But the biggest blowout occurred on May 27, when the Stars defeated Sugar Grove II, 24-0. Sugar Grove I lost to the Stars the next day, 10-2.

"After hearing and seeing the scores from that group, I called up the league office and said, ‘No way are we going to play them,’ " said Terry Morris, who coaches one of three teams from Bloom-Carroll schools in Fairfield County. "I wasn’t going to subject my players to that." Other teams started complaining. And canceling. The Stars were pulled from the league schedule. The team appealed to the league’s commissioner, Joe Bernowski, to no avail.

Though I'm surprised to admit it, I can sort of see the point to all this. The Stars clearly are too good to be on this schedule. It's not likely that all the best players would come from one zip code and assemble under a great coach, but it's not impossible, either. If it appears that every other team will get trashed, perhaps the Stars should be playing the older boys.

On the other hand, at what point does parental concern for self-esteem trump the rights of children to play? The Stars have won every game so far, but what if they'd lost one? Or two? What if only one game had been a blowout? Does kicking them out of the league now encourage parents to complain in a future situation which seems less cut-and-dried? Will parents now rush to boot out any team that seems just a tad too over-qualified? And note that it is in fact the parents being quoted here as the complainers.

A tie by any other name

Maryland high school senior Thomas Benya found himself short one diploma for allegedly being short a tie at graduation. His argument - that a bolo tie is a tie:

High-school officials are withholding Thomas Benya's diploma because he wore a bolo tie under his graduation gown. Benya, 17, said he prefers the string bolo ties over traditional knotted ties to reflect his Native American heritage.

But officials from Maurice J. McDonough High School in suburban Washington, D.C., said they warned him that a bolo violated the dress code for the event, held Wednesday for about 250 students.

The bolo "was not considered by staff to be a tie," said Katie O'Malley-Simpson, a school spokeswoman. "We have many opportunities throughout the year to express cultural heritage. But we don't do that at graduation."

The politicians are on the case, as Montana governor Brian Schweitzer is in high dudgeon over the whole affair:

A Charles County high school's decision to deny a diploma to a senior who wore a bolo tie to graduation didn't offend just the student and his family. Montana's governor is mighty annoyed, too.

"To have some high school say that a bolo tie is not a tie is an outrage," said Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), who called The Washington Post yesterday after reading an article about 17-year-old Thomas Benya.

"In Montana and anyplace in Indian country, a bolo tie is dressed up. A tie is a tie," Gov. Brian Schweitzer says. "In Montana and anyplace in Indian country, a bolo tie is dressed up," he said. "A tie is a tie."

Clothes makes the (sales)man

The Farkers were right to slap the "Obvious" tag on this one - goth chicks don't get hired at A&F, and preppy girls aren't welcome to work at Hot Topic:

It turns out what your mother always tells you is true: People judge you by your looks. Just ask Shannon Nichols, a senior at Livermore's Granada High School. Nichols, 18, recently tested that theory when she was applying for jobs...

[Shannon and a friend] got the idea after reading about a lawsuit successfully brought by employees against youthwear retailer Abercrombie & Fitch for trying to make its employees project a certain image. They decided to apply for jobs at the company's Pleasanton store.

Since Abercrombie would probably jump at the chance to hire the preppy-looking Nichols, she decided to test their tolerance for someone dressed as a goth. She sprayed her sandy brown hair black, layered on the heavy black eyeliner, added a fake lip ring and bared her jeweled navel...

...[but] Nichols experienced a [negative] response from store employees, who basically made it clear: Don't let the door hit you on your gothic backside on your way out.

"I waited in line to ask the cashier if I could fill out an application, and she tried to not even acknowledge I was there," Nichols says. "When it was my turn, she actually turned to the man behind me and asked if she could help him. He told her that I was first."

My initial reaction was, Shannon looks great as a goth. Those stupid short, flared pants are flattering to few figures, but she pulls it off, and the dark hair looks great. Let me be the first to say she should keep that look.

Seriously, though, A&F got sued because they wanted their employees to project a certain image? Are you kidding me? That's what stores like that are all about. No one is forced to work there, and no one is forced to wear their overpriced preppy clothes. Please. A&F is selling an image. Hot Topic is selling an image. Stores should be free to require employees to project that image. How is that different from perfectly legal dress codes in other organizations?

A house full of cats is a noisy house in any country

Cutest. Website. Ever.

The sound of a French bee, a cheerful "beeee-eeeep!," is the greeting at bzzzpeek.com, a Web site devoted to onomatopoeia. For anyone who does not know what onomatopoeia is, bzzzzpeek.com will gladly demonstrate. In fact, that's pretty much all the site does.

Onomatopoetic words, "buzz," "beep" and "moo," for instance, mimic the action or object they represent. They are, in theory, international, part of a lingua franca. Cows after all, don't moo differently in Spain than in Japan, do they? And all donkeys hee-haw, don't they?

You have 29 chances to find out to what degree this is not so.

I share an office with someone, so I had to put on headphones to try out the site. It's hysterical. I never knew my oldest cat was Italian. And Japanese snakes apparently have vocal cords. They have sounds for other objects, too, and if your kid wants to put his/her renditions on the site, the submission process is straightforward.

Also, if you start playing a sound bite and then click on another one, it will start playing while the previous one is still going. Clicking on all the cats in rapid succession made me feel like I was filling food bowls at a very exotic intake center.

Vandalism done right

Montpelier High's (VT) pranksters are budding Michaelangelos:

This year's senior prank has left a mark on Montpelier High School that school officials don't plan to erase. The class of 2005 painted a large celestial mural on a ceiling in the main lobby of the school during the holiday weekend, Principal Peter Evans said.

Evans said when he returned to school on Tuesday, he looked up at the mural and thought it was an art class project. He soon learned that it was the senior prank, a tradition that usually has a more troublesome impact on the school. About 170 ceiling tiles were painted, he said.

"In this position we try to figure out how to deal with a case of vandalism that's really quite beautiful," Evans said.

Found this photo in the Fark comments link; it really does look nice.

Wonder if any of the Montpelier Pranksters are headed to MIT?

Revising history

The Farkers today were abuzz over the story that, between 1958 and 1967, Charles Lindbergh fathered seven illegitimate children by three mistresses in Germany. The tale is fascinating, but a particular sarcastic comment caught my eye:

This just seems too ironic for me, because Im remembering a reading passage excerpt on one of my SATs. I don't remember if it was an article, a book, or just simply a debate between two people, but the author claimed that Lindbergh was a hero who wasn't afraid to be "classy". I believe (although it seems I'm vaguely remembering), the author claimed him to be a hero of a generation who wasn't sinful, lustful, etc.(the classical generation) unlike this new generation was. "Lindbergh was a good man, who lived a good life, and he didn't get into any trouble for dumb things these kids were doing now-a-days", this was basically the author's point.

Now of course, I'm laughing my ass off after reading this. Oh, he's "classy" indeed!

If this was in fact on the SAT, perhaps this particular reading passage should be retired from the pool and not used in future practice exams.

Lifeblogging from IKEA

Spent Sunday at IKEA picking out one of our engagement gifts - a corner hutch for china.

Dave really enjoyed the carts, on which you can skateboard. I'm picking out furnishing and looked over to see this:

Cabinet, before:

Cabinet, after!

A busy Thursday

No bloggage today; I'll be in OracleAS/Discoverer training all day, followed by time with the kitties at the animal shelter. But if you're just dying to read something I've written, a .pdf of my latest publication - a book review that will appear in the Journal of Educational Measurement - can be found here (click on the .pdf file name after you arrive at the webpage). The following legalese applies:

This PDF file may be posted on the Contributing Author's own website for personal or professional use...

The Contributing Author may make photocopies of, or distribute via electronic mail or fax, his/her own work for the Contributing Author's own teaching and research purposes provided (a) that such copies are not resold and (b) that reference to the original source of publication and the name of the copyright holder is clearly stated on any copies made of the article.

Fiesty high school girls in the news

One girl causes a ruckus merely by walking across the stage at graduation:

A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage anyway at the close of the program. Alysha Cosby's decision prompted cheers and applause Tuesday from many of her fellow seniors at St. Jude Educational Institute. But her mother and aunt were escorted out of the church by police after Cosby headed back to her seat.

"I can't believe something like this is happening in 2005," said her mother, Sheila Cosby. "My daughter has been through a lot and I am proud of her. She deserved to walk, and she did"...

The father of Cosby's child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation.

Another girl mouths off against no-drinking rules - and suffers the consequences:

Shawnda Lawson, 18, told The Frederick News-Post earlier this month that she had refused to sign a pledge that she wouldn't drink -- and she told the paper she likes drinking. After the story was published, Lawson said she was told by her principal she was banned from the prom and was an embarrassment to the school.

Her father, Timothy Lawson, told The Associated Press that he doesn't believe Shawnda drinks. And he said the school's principal shouldn't have punished his daughter for something she reportedly said.

And a third girl pisses her boyfriend's mother off something fierce:

For a mother who remembered the senior superlatives in her own high school yearbook hewing to "Most Likely to Succeed" and "Best Smile," the picture came as a surprise to Jacqueline Nobles.

In Boynton Beach High's 2005 yearbook, her son, Robert Richards, is shown with a leash around his neck. Students voting on superlatives — a staple of yearbooks for decades — elected Richards as "Most Whipped" by his girlfriend, using the slang term for a person who is controlled by another in a relationship. The accompanying photo shows Richards, who is black, on a leash held by Melissa Finley, who is white.

Nobles wants the books recalled.

"I know it's supposed to be in fun, but there are people still having trouble with African-Americans' past and this will be offensive," said Nobles, who said the picture reminded her of the poster for the 1970s miniseries Roots, which featured a manacled slave. "This picture, to me, is very distasteful."

You think? Did not one adult leaf through the annual before it went to press? And I don't care if they're smiling, I don't like the photo for, "Most Likely To Be On Jerry Springer," either.

Tag! You're it!

Tag as a rough-and-ready physical game might be on the wane in schools, but it's flourishing in the blogosphere. The Education Wonks tagged me in the game of "If I could be...."

I get to choose five questions and answer, then tag three other bloggers. The questions:

If I could be a scientist...If I could be a farmer...If I could be a musician...If I could be a doctor...If I could be a painter...If I could be a gardener...If I could be a missionary...If I could be a chef...If I could be an architect...If I could be a linguist...If I could be a psychologist...If I could be a librarian...If I could be an athlete...If I could be a lawyer...If I could be an inn-keeper...If I could be a professor...If I could be a writer...If I could be a llama-rider...If I could be a bonnie pirate...If I could be an astronaut...If I could be a world famous blogger...If I could be a justice on any one court in the world...If I could be married to any current famous political figure...

Very amusing, and since I already consider myself a scientist, a psychologist, a writer, and a librarian (I do have a library, 'tho it's a small one), does that make four of the five? No? Okay then.

If I could be an astronaut...I'd live in a space ship forever. I love small spaces, prepackaged food, and the idea of zero gravity. (The concept of having "no weight" is one that appeals to me, for obvious reasons.) Oh, I'd go outside every once in a while to photograph an amazing star formation or two, but on the whole I'd be happy inside my little rocket ship. Landing on a planet would be nice, but the journey's half the fun.

If I could be an athlete...I'd be an expert in Muy Thai, or Thai kickboxing. I used to take classes in that at the Princeton Academy of Martial Arts , and I loved it. Anyone see, Jackass, the Movie? Remember the scene where one guy gets his arse kicked by a girl in about 90 seconds flat? I really, really want to be that girl.

If I could be a doctor...I'd be a veterinarian, not a physician. Let's face it - the malpractice insurance rates are lower, the lawsuits appear less frequently, and the patients are cuter, even when they're sick. Maybe especially when they're sick. Plus, what other medical office functions well when overrun with critters, to the point where the receptionist has to shoo two cats and an iguana off the appointment book just to schedule your next visit? If a physician's office were filled with stray, loitering humans, just hanging around taking up space, things would look weird and out of control; when a vet's office is stuffed with spare animals, hey, that's a sign of a good cat whisperer. I like that.

If I could be a professor...I'd be tucked away in a tiny little provincial-yet-tony liberal arts college, known as the eccentric, geeky Dr. Swygert who teaches Latin and collects pet cats. I'd be a very tough grader but very fair with my students, and I'd do my damndest to get young men and women interested in this "dead language," as they say. I'd wear thick glasses and sensible shoes, yet I'd date the handsome young basketball coach, just to shake up people's expectations. I'd be the oddball who says politically-incorrect things in faculty meetings and drives the liberal student leaders nuts, but every year I'd find one or two like-minded students who saw the beauty of the language, and recognized it as a link to the ancients.

If I could be a llama-rider...I'd have to lose a lot of weight. I could see this llama being smart enough to say, "You think you're riding on MY back, after all those Hershey's Kisses and Nutter Butters? Amstel Light is not a diet drink when you have 10 at a sitting, toots. I'm laying right here and not budging until you get off and that cute little blonde kid gets back on."

Paying it forward: I'm tagging John Rosenberg, Daryl Cobranchi, and the lovely Anchoress.

Things you didn't know about me

Behold the power of sunscreen - this is how I photograph in daylight, with no flash. (And I will look the same come August, in case you were wondering):

And to continue with a meme that was recently going around the web, here are 10 things you (probably) didn't know about me:

1. Back in the day, my mother was both a prize-winning pianist and a super-fast typist. I've had lessons in neither area, but I type amazingly fast and I bend my fingers up and down and attack the keyboard like I'm playing the piano.
2. Chocolate-covered cherries make me gag.
3. I hate for people to be able to see what books I'm reading, so I always try to hide my book covers when I'm reading in public.
4. I always sit in the back rows of theaters.
5. I cry very easily, especially at emotional movies/TV shows like It's A Wonderful Life or Snoopy, Come Home.
6. I play for blood at Boggle.
7. I will stop the car and jump out to meet someone's puppy on the sidewalk. How most women act around babies, I am around baby animals.
8. I wrecked the first car that I drove four times.
9. My hair has been: red, green, purple, black, white, blonde, yellow, red, orange, and brown. Hey, it's just hair. It'll grow back.
10. I've moved nine times in 13 years. I've actually been through three houses while I've had this one blog. Is it any wonder that I want to stay put for a while?

Lifeblogging

Spring has taken its sweet time getting here. Finally, though, 'tis arrived, and both hands are sore from planting astilbe, geraniums, and impatiens.

The impatiens are mixed in with the astilbe, along the side:

The geraniums are out front with what I think are azaleas planted by the previous owners (those of you who have geniune green thumbs are welcome to correct me):

I also finally put some windchimes in the corner; a birdbath has been ordered from Overstock.com and is on its way:

No, it's not a huge garden, but this is about what you get with an 18-foot wide rowhome.

Jostens salutes the proud hghi shcolo graduates

Jostens has always managed to get the rings correct, as far as I know, but their track record on diplomas doesn't look too good:

Poor spelling could prevent hundreds of high school seniors from getting their diplomas next week - but it's not the students' fault. Officials in Lee County in southwest Florida said some diplomas showed up with misspelled names for students and school board members; at least one degree misspelled "chairman." Some diplomas didn't arrive at all.

School district officials said Jostens, a Minneapolis-based company that leads the market for graduation paraphernalia, is to blame.

The students will still graduate - provided they passed the FCAT - but their diplomas will just have to wait until the company can correct the errors.

Skipping gym - and graduation

We all know physical education is important for young people. But this important?

Though Isabel Gottlieb is a good student, a trumpet player in the school band and holds varsity letters in three sports, she discovered last fall she was one gym class shy of having enough credits to graduate next month. She asked for a waiver, but the school wouldn't budge, telling her instead she had to drop a class to take gym.

"Why would I drop an AP biology class to take P.E.?" the 18-year-old said. "It's just not on my priority list."

The missing credit wasn't caught by the school last spring when Gottlieb's schedule was set. The class in question is called BEST, or Building Essential Skills for Tomorrow, and is required for all Bow students to graduate. At the Seattle high school Gottlieb attended before moving to Bow before her junior year, gym requirements often were waived for students in varsity sports. But those waivers aren't something Bow High School is willing to accept.

Do I think the school should have denied the diploma because a varsity sports player didn't take PE? No, but Gottlieb knew the rules and decided to do what she felt was best for her. She probably thought the school would eventually bend the rules, but it hasn't. Luckily, her college of choice will admit her with a GED.

Tales of disaster

Gee, yesterday I post an article about the new SAT that many commenters disliked, and today I leave my house to discover that someone has smashed my rear-view mirror off the driver's side of my car. Hope those two events aren't related.

Anyhow, thanks to that and other personal disasters, no bloggage today. Everyone enjoy your Cinco de Mayo, and I'll be back tomorrow!

Winning the coveted "five spork" award

A high-school student wins the hearts and minds of his fellow classmen by critiquing the tater tots:

A high school senior in Pennsylvania is drawing rave reviews for his role as the school's cafeteria critic. Rick Seltzer publishes his opinions in the school's monthly newspaper, and uses a rating system of up to five "sporks," to rate the cuisine.

Seltzer began writing the reviews as a junior at the urging of classmates, who found his rants about the cafeteria's offerings entertaining. His columns have since become some of the most-read pieces in the school's newspaper.

This part is hysterical:

However, not everyone is a fan. The school's food-service director said she would like the chance to teach him more about how the cafeteria operates.

Translation: She'd like to introduce his head to a metal tray or two. In the real world, food critics are protected by conditions of strict anonymity, but Seltzer is made (luckily) of sterner stuff.

Putting the "boo" in Booberries

I never got gifts like this free with my cereal:

A two-foot snake found its way into a packet of breakfast cereal, it emerged today. Five-year-old Jordan Willett, from Dawley, Shropshire, discovered the live reptile inside his box of Golden Puffs on Bank Holiday Monday. His mother Theresa, who was having breakfast with her son at the time, said she initially thought it was a free gift for children. Describing the incident, the 23-year-old said: “My lad, he went to open his cereal and luckily enough I was behind him because a snake popped out."

For heaven's sakes, it was a corn snake (and for you wits out there, no, that's not because it was a corn-based cereal). They're gentle, non-venomous, and make excellent pets. I have to buy my pet snakes, and pay shipping (which is high) for them. Why don't these sorts of surprises ever go to the people who would appreciate them?

Hmph.

Making a run for it

My fellow Bridezillas and I have been cackling over the Runaway Bride newstory. Myself, I think anyone insane enough to plan a wedding with 14 bridesmaid should be committed on the spot (and I believe the Manolo, he agrees with me), but then, I'm procrastinating the organization of a wedding that will have a mere 22 attendees (including Dave and I). I recently heard that Donald Trump had only 500 guests at his wedding, while the Wilbanks shindig allegedly had planned for at least 100 more than that. Tip: When your guest list is longer than Donald Trump's, it's time for an intervention.

Wizbang has the round-up on the latest media coverage of the crazy wouldn't-be bride and her devoted fiance, who supposedly still wants to marry his little marathon runner (and serial fiancee). Unrepentant Individual sums it up best with a post entitled, "This Ain't Baseball; One Strike Is Enough":

One of my (undisclosed) rules while engaged was that if my wife had ever called off the wedding or given back the ring, that was it. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, I’m right out the door. I’m tremendously thankful I was never in the position where I had to make that choice. But I’ve seen it happen to others.

News of the Weird roundup

If you spend over $1400 on Girl Scout Cookies, it's time to admit you have a problem.

There's a reason that sex crime laws are often broadly written - to catch the offenders who prefer, um, unusual means of sexual contact.

A prank gone wrong. Personally, I don't think it was that bad an idea for a joke. And I think this is a GREAT idea for a joke, although it should be for people who are (a) your very close friends and (b) not employed by a school district.

Some of Salem's witches are all in a tizzy.

Trekkies: The last group that it's okay to smear via stereotype?

Who you calling flightless waterfowl?

You hear complaints that people dress too sloppily in airports these days, but look what happens when you put on your shinest tuxedo to fly:

Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Diego went through regular airport screening at Denver International Airport recently. Here, Pat and Penny are removed from their carry-on case so they can walk through the metal detector.

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

Get ready, get set, get naked

An amusing brouhaha at an Illinois high school:

A veteran Oak Forest High School teacher has received a written reprimand for telling students last week they could earn extra credit if they took part in a "Get Naked Day" in his classroom. The comments were an unfortunate, tongue-in-cheek effort by English teacher Bob Burt to get his students interested in an upcoming lesson, Bremen High School District 228 Supt. Richard Mitchell said.

Burt never intended for the students in a senior writing class to get naked but merely wanted them to wear loose-fitting pants and flip-flops as part of a lesson based around the 1989 movie "My Left Foot," Mitchell said. However, he said Burt did not make it clear to the students that his reference to "Get Naked Day" was a joke when he announced it April 6.

At least three boys told their parents that night about Get Naked Day. The parents complained to school officials, saying such sexually suggestive talk had no place in a classroom.

In case you're wondering what getting naked has to do with the movie, "My Left Foot," Burt wanted students to try to write and draw with their feet that day, and needed to have shoes that easily slipped off and pants that easily rolled up. The claim that such an exercise would have any educational value at all sounds pretty dubious to me, as does Burt's alleged past behavior:

Senior Tom McCullagh, one of the students who complained about Burt's remarks, said Burt told the class that "he knows our hormones are raging and we want to see each other naked anyway." Burt also said he would put paper over the windows so no one could see in and that Get Naked Day would be the class' secret, McCullagh said...

Burt has made sexually suggestive comments before in the class, said McCullagh, who acknowledged that he was performing poorly in the course. "Everything we did (in class) basically involved sex or sexual connotations," McCullagh said. "He does it in every class. The 'Get Naked Day' was the final straw."

New information

I've made a few updates to N2P:

1. I've added several blogs (most of which I've been referencing a lot lately) to the "Education Blogs" sidebar.
2. I've added several sites to the "Political and Social Giants" sidebar.
3. I've added some righteous babes to the "Tough Cookies" sidebar.
4. I've added Viking Pundit to my pundit list, and John Ray to my list of bloggers outside the US.
5. I've added a link to my information at the Truth Laid Bear's Ecosystem, in which I am a "Large Mammal." Which is not too far from the truth, given all the beer and chocolate that I ingest.

If you happen to have a blog, and you permalink to me, and I haven't permalinked to you, let me know. Devoted Reader Adrian, I know you put a link to your new blog somewhere in my comments, but I can't find it, so leave it here again, if you don't mind.

Still waiting for a song with Kimberly in the lyrics

I'm linking to this small cornucopia of Apollo 13 links and info for one reason, and that's because I'm pathetically grateful for the fact that this movie gave me the chance to hear my last name pronounced on screen. It was the first and probably last time I got to hear it, but darn it, I enjoyed it. Jack Swigert also has to be a relative of mine in some distant fashion, given the rarity of the name.

Update: Gotta love the internet. Reader Ken was quick to point out that Patti Smith's debut album Horses contains the song "Kimberly". You can listen to a snippet of it here.

Zero tolerance for black lipstick

A Wiccan teenager fights for his right to wear makeup:

A ninth-grade student has accused officials at a Southern California high school of discrimination for suspending him for wearing lipstick and eye makeup. James Herndon, 16, said the five-day suspension imposed Monday by administrators at San Bernardino's Pacific High School was unfair because females are allowed to wear cosmetics on campus.

Herndon says his black lipstick and red eye makeup express the Wiccan religious beliefs he shares with his mother, a priestess in the neo-pagan faith. He contends the suspension violates his constitutional right to free expression.

All I can say is, James ain't got nothin' on me when it comes to the religion of makeup. If devotion to a religion is measured on the amount of makeup one wears, the amount of money that one spends on makeup, and the amount of time that one spends obsessing about makeup, then I am a High Priestess of Sephora and a bishop of blush, who daily worships the liturgy of lipstick, makes an epiclesis to eyeliner, and follows the mysticism of mascara.

Okay, I'm not as bad as Tammy Faye. But I'm pretty close. Addicted to hair color, too; I've gone back to red, which is much closer to my natural shade.

For a much more serious discussion of the James Herndon situation, visit ZeroIntelligence.

Various and sundry

Man, we need some cheerfulness around here. Okay, I need some cheerfulness. Between work, depressing school violence stories, and tales of NCLB-related lawsuits, I feel like I've been too serious.

Henceforth, a list of links to happy things that I adore that have absolutely nothing to do with standardized testing.

My friend Jennifer's eBay shop. She recently made me a necklace of wooden skull beads and hematite, with a perfume oil vial pendant. Very funky.

The Superficial. Snarky gossip coverage at its best. I also read PageSixSixSix, Pink Is The New Blog, and BritPoppa every day, because a day without news of Britney Spears' impending progeny is like a day without sunshine.

No matter how bad my days are, I can always tell myself, at least I haven't shown up here. My favorite mugshots are grouped under "Fashion." It's criminal justice at work - with commentary!

OM Yoga produces absolutely wonderful CDs for learning yoga at home. I'd love to have a class with Cindy Lee, but the CDs are a great substitute Of course, at home I have to deal with the cats, who wait until I'm in perfect alignment before brushing up against me and knocking me over.

I can't decide - Berry or Black? Help me out here, folks. I like the Green too, but it's out of stock.

My newest obsession: the novels of Raymond Chandler. I've read only The Big Sleep so far, and I loved it. I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

9 Chickweed Lane. An amusing soap opera comic strip, with very strong female characters - and one crazy cat.

For more crazy cats, go to MeanKitty.com. Or just look at Alice, who's been giving me this maniacal look for thirty minutes, as if to say, "Would you get off the #*(@*! computer and get down here and pet me?"

Students Against Drunk Chauffeurs

Ten Miami teenagers took a wild ride to their prom:

Ten Florida teenagers who hired a limousine to give them a safe ride to their prom party instead snatched the keys from the chauffeur after some erratic driving -- and found a bottle of vodka in the driver's seat. The teens said chauffeur Christina Tomacelli, 49, rushed through stop signs, cut off other drivers and even drove on the wrong side of the road, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported Tuesday.

One of the teens used his cell phone to call his father, who urged them to get Tomacelli to pull over. When she stopped, the teens pulled the keys out of the ignition. When police arrived, they found the half-empty bottle of vodka in the driver's seat and arrested Tomacelli on charges of drunk driving and refusing to take a blood-alcohol test, the newspaper reported.

Can you say, "lawsuit?" That limousine company will be lucky to still be in business in 2006.

The portrait of Bill Clinton on the front was a dead giveaway

I guess you're never too young to learn that counterfeiting is a serious crime:

A sixth grader and two of his friends were suspended for using phoney dollar bills made on a home computer to buy food in the school cafeteria. On Monday, a cafeteria worker at James Madison Middle School found a dollar bill that didn't look or feel like the real thing. Seattle school district spokesman Patti Spencer said people in the lunch room were told to watch for more counterfeit bills.

An assistant principal called Seattle police the next day after a sixth grader tried to use one of the fake bills to buy beef jerky from the cafeteria.

Results: A three-day suspension. Yes, sixth-graders can be idiots, and this isn't a violent crime, but shouldn't fake money carry as stiff a penalty as having a fake weapon (something expressly forbidden by the Seattle school district)?

Yummy

I did not receive one of these for Easter. My fiance is off the hook, since he had the flu all week.

Given that it's now on my Amazon wish list, you Devoted Readers are (hint, hint) not off the hook.

Reading while eating is a valuable skill in life

I would have absolutely rebelled had this rule been in effect at my school:

My son just told me that in his school all the kids bring iPods to lunch but -- get this -- they're not allowed to bring books to lunch. Now, to be reasonable, I'm assuming that's because books are big and clunky and iPods aren't.

Hmmm. Books - especially for kids - aren't always that big and clunky. And some students - I'm thinking of myself here - always have books in their hands. And surely not every child can afford an iPod? My guess is that, at that school, some kid chucked their hardcopy version of Harry Potter at an unsuspecting head, but it would be sad if the result were the banning of all lunchroom books, rather than the removal of the book tossers.

(Via Joanne.)

The edublogging corner

Michelle Malkin points out to oh-so-important Maureen Dowd that female bloggers are plentiful - if you're willing to accept that conservative women are "real" women too. But she leaves out one rich area of female bloggers with non-PC ideas - the edubloggers.

Joanne Jacobs is of course the most well-known, and you know me if you're reading me right now, but there are edublogeresses out there who aren't impressed by the feminists' victim stance or the eradication of Western Civ in schools. Others go for serious content, with equations or thoughtful essays about modern education. Here's my list of recent reads (not all would call themselves edubloggers, but all have postings that are at least occasionally related to education):

Erin O'Connor
Moebius Stripper
Learning Curves
Illuminaria's Voice
Guilt-free Homeschooling
The Classical Family
Education Weak
Jenny D.

"the more unhappy they are, the more undressed they are"

Remember our previous discussion on the new modesty for young women?

The Manolo, he would agree. Via Insty.

Slimming down school lunches

Adults who are trying to lose weight might be a tad envious of Florida schoolchildren who get to try the South Beach diet at school:

Nine-year-old Kelly Ferrer no longer gets the waffles, pancakes and sugar cereals that she loved eating for breakfast last year in her school cafeteria. This year, instead, she is served whole-wheat bread, lowfat cheese and fruit.

Does she like it? No.

"I want to go back to the old menu," said the fourth-grader at Mill Creek Elementary School. "We had better food last year."

Kelly's is one of six schools in this Orlando suburb taking part in a study by a research center founded by Dr. Arthur Agatston, the author of "The South Beach Diet." The goal of the study is to figure out whether school cafeterias are capable of serving more nutritious food, whether kids will eat it and whether their health will improve...

Although the 3,000 students in the study haven't been put on the low-carb diet per se, many of the diet's guiding principles have been incorporated into school menus. White bread has been stricken and replaced with whole-wheat. White potatoes were subbed with sweet potatoes. French fries were abolished. Grilled chicken replaced breaded chicken. Fruits serve as dessert.

As long as they're not actually limiting calories - and it sounds like they aren't - this seems like a good idea.

Update: I bet Lee would think it's a good idea, too.

Snakeblogging

A photo of my slitheriest pet, Sabio the Thayer's Kingsnake:

Investigating the table:

Isn't it nice to see loved ones chowing down on a nice hot meal you've prepared especially for them?

Update: How cute - Sabio's been featured in the "Other Vertebrates" section of the "Friday Ark" over at the Modulator.

And yes, there is an "Invertebrates Blogging" section.

Whine and cheese

Would you like to know a little bit about the psychometrician behind the curtain?

Specifically, my day?

Things really aren't getting any less horrible. My code keeps crashing. I've had to apologize three times in the last week to co-workers I've inadvertently offended. I was home sick on Monday with a sore throat. I accidentally missed a meeting today, thus most likely offending a fourth person. And I could not get one single solitary thing to go right today - not one little piece of SAS or SPSS code, not one simple question from someone else, not one simple decision on something that needed be done. Twenty hours of work in two days, and I've accomplished diddly-squat.

Meanwhile, my fiance called me at the office twice today, to tell me the following things:

* Danzig was scheduled to play tonight at the Electric Factory. Did we want to go? (No.)
* Fark.com has a link to an absolutely hilarious list of curse words banned by the NFL from the back of personalized jerseys.

Dave, in fact, spent most of his workday perusing the list, and the Farker's comments on it. Which wasn't a problem, because he forwarded his boss the list, and he also spent most of the day reading it.

Nice to know someone around this house actually works for a living.

The wonders of Derbyshire

John Derbyshire is one of my favorite columnists. Here are two reasons why:

Larry Summers: This month's release of the full transcript of that January speech did nothing to get Summers off the hook, but it did demonstrate that he is a mathematically literate guy well informed about the human sciences.

The maddening thing is that all public discussion of the human sciences is conducted like this, by people so statistically illiterate that they simply cannot understand the most elementary points of fact. If a person who does have a clue what he's talking about sticks his head above the parapet and states one of the basic truths garnered from decades of research, he gets a bullet between the eyes. It's appalling.

Oh, can I ever talk about people who are statistically illiterate...

And the second reason I like him so much:

We went up to the Catskills for the Derb family annual ski trip. The skiing itself was fine, except that I had been too lazy busy to do my preparatory squats and calf raises in the preceding weeks, so that after a few hours on the slopes my legs came out on strike.

I did, though, notice the following distressing phenomenon. I suppose it goes with fatherhood, but I'm just not ready for it, and am not sure I ever shall be. What I noticed was, guys looking at Nellie, my daughter. I mean, looking. Nellie is only 12, but tall for her age, and slender, with a pretty face and long straight hair. She has no figure to speak of, but in ski clothes that doesn't notice. So these guys were looking at her. They weren't her coevals, either; these were brutes — sorry, I mean lads — of 17, 18, 19. It was all very disturbing. Memo to teen boys everywhere: I have guns.

Earning the respect of the testrixes

James Lileks has quite the little test-taker on his hands:

This morning I took Gnat to get screened for school. It’s mandatory. They test the eyes and ears, put the kid through a battery of tests designed to test all sorts of skills. Fill in the blank, name opposites, identify adjectives, repeat patterns, find rhymes, identify alliterations, reconcile Social Security expenditures with income in the out years, etc...

“Perfect score,” she said. “In all the time we have done this, she’s only the second one to get a perfect score.” A round of applause! The expected score for 4 /1/2 year olds is 30 out of 68. She got 68 out of 68. We looked over the results; the testricine explained what they’d done, and how she’d not only got everything right but done so in a snap. And so begins a lifetime of overachievement and self-identification through testing!

Congrats. I feel like I should send flowers.

It's been a "Plan Nine" kind of day

Bad day.

Really, really, bad day.

If you're reading this blog voluntarily, and you're not leaving nasty messages in the comments, you're being nicer to me than 99% of the people I've had to deal with today.

Sheesh.

The snow's awful pretty, though. And I have The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made geared up in the DVD player, and am taking some comfort in the fact that my screwups will probably never be so large, nor so amusing, as to make it into documentary format.

Dashing their spirits, the apology

The Brooklyn teacher whose students sent less-than-encouraging letters to troops in South Korea apologizes:

In a statement issued by the Department of Education, social studies teacher Alex Kunhardt said he regretted offending Pfc. Rob Jacobs. His statement, however, did not address whether he either coached the students or read their missives — which accused soldiers of committing atrocities in Iraq — before mailing them. The DOE, which is sending an apology to Jacobs and his family, declined comment.

"It was never my intention to demean or insult anyone," said Kunhardt..."I never meant for the words of my students to hurt any of our troops. The responsibility for this action is mine alone, and I apologize." Kunhardt mailed letters to Jacobs last month written by 21 of his sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope for an assignment. Nearly half of them derided President Bush or the Iraq war and accused soldiers of crimes such as killing civilians and destroying mosques. Even some of those that praised soldiers for their bravery were laced with divisive political rhetoric and ominous predictions.

Update: The Post prints Letters to the Editor on this topic today, most of which say we shouldn't "censor" the kids, or we should assume that the teacher "brainwashed" the students. But one letter writer who knows her history gets it exactly right:

One irony in this story is that JHS 51 is called "The William Alexander School." It is named after Lord Stirling, a general in Washington's army and hero of the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776 — the turning point in the American Revolution.

Nancy Brenner, Manhattan

Bingo.

Not on the same wavelength

Fascinating article in the LA Times about a town that's riled parents and students alike with some new technologies:

This little Northern California farm town is blissfully unaccustomed to turmoil. But recent weeks dished up a hopper of dissent. It started with a girl who went home from junior high saying she felt like an orange.

After a rambunctious Feb. 8 board meeting, InCom opted to turn off the scanners until the board resolved the squabbling. As school let out before last week's board meeting, foes prowled either side of campus with picket signs. "Badges … badges…. We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges," said one.

Emphases all mine. What a classic mess. Parents citing biblical warnings from Revelations, picket signs, parents missing some important public hearings, the concept of using RFID to better track attendance and keep school funding, kids who feel like produce on the shelf - it's all here.

Valedictorians gone bad

Fox News tells us that a high-school valedictorian - who, by the way, moved to Saudi Arabia and joined an al Qaeda cell - was arrested and charged with conspiring to kill President Bush:

An American citizen was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting Al Qaeda. If convicted of all the charges, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison...

Abu Ali was born in Houston and later moved to Falls Church, Va., where he was valedictorian of his high school class. He allegedly went on to pursue religious studies in Saudi Arabia in 2000 and federal prosecutors say Abu Ali joined an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia in 2001. The alleged Bush plot occurred while he was studying in that country, the indictment says.

How coy of them not to mention what high school he attended, given that they saw fit to tell us he was a valedictorian. Is that, somehow, supposed to be more important than the specifics of his "religious training" in Saudia Arabia? I couldn't find him mentioned in the class list of George Mason High School (the only Falls Church public high school I could find) for graduation years 1997 - 2000, so that doesn't look like the place, unless he's changed his name since graduating. Other schools in the area seem to be primarily Hebrew or Catholic, so those are doubtful.

Anyway, the buzz on the right side of the blogosphere along the lines of "How could someone come out of the educational system in the US and turn out like this?" has already begun.

The Baron, for one, isn't surprised:

Every day, I walk into a building where a picture of Bush is prominently displayed on a staff-member’s door with the caption “American Psycho.” Across the street, a picture of Bush used to grace the post office drop box (for weeks before someone ripped it down) that read “Kill me before I kill some more.” The CD store down the road has posters in the window for CD’s titled “Rock Against Bush.” I often hear people debating whether or not Bush means to kill innocent people. During the innauguration, one man wondered aloud if we would be so lucky as to have Bush catch pneumonia and die after his inauguration speech like William Henry Harrison did.

Update: Boy, was I ever on the wrong track. Abu Ali was a valedictorian all right - at the Islamic Saudi Academy. All the news reports about his top dog academic status, and they couldn't manage to let us know the name of the school?

Update # 2: Philly.com has another name for Abu Ali's alma mater.

Bet the laboratory assignment is a doozy

Wasn't this a storyline from Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

The Roman Catholic Church is facing a shortage you may not have heard about: qualified exorcists. And so, on Thursday about 100 priests stood, prayed for protection, then sat down to begin an eight-week study of how to distinguish and fight demonic possession. The course at Rome's prestigious Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum, represents the first time a Vatican- sanctioned course in exorcism is being offered at this level...

"When you're dealing with a reality like the devil," said 39-year-old Father Clement Machado of Canada, "you can't just learn the theoretical. You need the pragmatic experience…. It's such uncharted territory."

Uncharted territory that they're going to cover in two months. I'm just amazed that public schools take years and years to teach basic skills in the 3 R's, and here the Vatican's figured out a way to teach priests to recognize and deal with demons in only 8 short weeks! Now that's some efficient teaching.

So, who wants to help me develop the multiple-choice end-of-course exam for this class?

Something doesn't add up at the Times

Oh, this is amusing. It seems Powerline blog is having a bit of fun with the NYTimes and their "correction" section,

We've had a lot of fun at the expense of the New York Times' Corrections section, pointing out how it exposes the lack of basic, high school-level knowledge of history, literature, arithmetic and science on the part of the paper's reporters and editors. Today's Corrections section takes on the mysteries of geometry:

Remember: These people think they are entitled to exercise power because they're smarter than you!

Yes, the bad, bad puns have already begun:

Acute Problem of the Times: The text provided by the Power Line reader Paul Schlick should be read for it's multiple, um, angles.

Powerline reader Reader Paul Schlick's suggested improved correction: Since our reporters and editors are often 'obtuse' we have an 'acute' problem getting the facts 'right'. Thus we must again do a '180', this time with regard to ... (insert current correction here) While some see as hypocrisy our approach to certain issues from differing 'angles' depending on which 'side' at the moment supports our ideology, we prefer the term 'triangulation.'

A list of don'ts

Don't let your daughters read Young Miss:

FAIRCHILD Publications pulped 200,000 copies of a special prom issue of YM magazine yesterday after a teen porn Web site address turned up in an ad for prom dresses. The X-rated address appeared by accident in a six-page ad for prom dress maker Studio 17 that ran in YM Your Prom, Mediaweek.com reports. Readers who tried to check out the Studio 17 Web site were instead directed to "The hottest teenage sex club on the 'Net," where the only prom dresses on display are around the girls' ankles.

Don't let your sons marry their sixth-grade teachers:

Mary Kay Letourneau and her former sixth-grade pupil, Vili Fualaau, with whom she had two children, have set the date for their wedding, according to an online bridal registry. Letourneau, 43, and Fualaau, 22, plan to wed April 16, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Monday. Letourneau served 7 1/2 years on a 1997 conviction for raping Fualaau.

Don't let your little ones pick up bags of dirt:

It's a story you saw only on Heartland News. One that generated an incredible response from you. More than a 1,000 of you logged onto our web site to voice your opinion on the Sikeston first grade student disciplined for giving a bag of dirt and grass to a classmate.

Police and school leaders felt it looked like a bag of marijuana. The girl's mother tells Heartland News that her child did not realize the difference between a bag of weed and the illegal kind. But, passing even a fake drug is illegal and had the child been older, she could have been arrested.

Don't let your teenage daughters perform random acts of kindness for neighbors:

The Colorado woman who sued two girls after they made an anonymous, nighttime cookie delivery said she and her family have been the target of hate mail, harassing phone calls and even death threats. "This isn't about cookies," Renea Young told "Good Morning America." "It's not about a couple of girls out spreading cheer. It's about a horrible experience for me and my family."

It all started last summer when Taylor Ostergaard, now 18, and Lindsey Zellitti, now 19, decided to stay home from a dance in order to surprise their neighbors with an anonymous delivery of homemade cookies. But Young, 49 — appearing on "Good Morning America" with her husband, Herb — said she became so terrified when the girls banged on her door at 10:30 p.m. and ran away that she suffered an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital the next day. Young sued the girls and was awarded about $900 to recoup her medical bills.

Don't send your kids to schools that think "theater instruction" is the way to address schoolroom violence (via Joanne Jacobs):

A desperate Bronx teacher fired off an anonymous letter to the City Council describing hellish conditions at a violent middle school...In her plea for help, the teacher recounted a recent day when she spent an entire 45-minute class trying to gain control of misbehaving kids.

...Parents, teachers and students [have] repeatedly complained that city educrats do not know how to deal with out-of-control classrooms. Adding to that perception, school officials announced yesterday that they will combat bullying by creating five days of "interactive theater instruction" for 5,000 kids this month.

Don't assume, if your kid is renting a tux, that it must be for the prom (via Daryl Cobranchi):

Mock gay marriages of 18 students at Silverado High School on Friday drew dozens of angry community and parent protesters to a campus already plagued by controversy. The lunchtime "wedding" ceremonies of six female couples and three male couples in the school's outdoor central gathering area were part of a demonstration by members of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance in support of same-sex marriage and to mark National Freedom to Marry Day today. The day was declared by a gay and non-gay partnership advocating same-sex marriage.

You know, with the weather being so crappy and all, might be best not to let your kid out of the house - or out of your sight - for a while. Like maybe for the next 18 years.

Happy Valentine's Day!

If the tulips look a bit tipsy, it's because (a) I just got them, and (b) I've been inviting coworkers to take some for themselves. Once everyone is done picking them over, I'll rearrange them.

When cheap furniture costs an arm and a leg

Is is that hard to find a cheap sofa in England?

Five people are in hospital today after hundreds were crushed as the opening of England's biggest Ikea store turned into a riot. Nine ambulances were sent to the outlet in north London after reports that up to 20 people had suffered heat exhaustion when the opening at midnight descended into chaos. Staff closed the doors after half an hour amid fears the stampede could become a Hillsborough-style crush.

Security guards said they were put "under siege" by customers who attacked them, leaving one guard with a dislocated jaw. The store remains closed and a cleanup operation is under way. Ikea apologised for the chaos and admitted the store was understaffed - but added that some customers "behaved like animals".

For a sofa under $100? Who wants to bet Ikea's going to come under fire for the "animals" remark, too?

Hell no, we want our Ho-Hos!

Arizona is trying to ban the sale of candy and soda inside schools:

A legislative proposal to ban the sale of candy and sodas inside Arizona schools is in trouble, even though the main sponsors agreed Wednesday to exempt high schools to keep the idea alive. HB2544 only narrowly survived its first test Wednesday after 2 1 /2 hours of debate before the House K-12 Education Committee. At least two lawmakers who voted yes said they don’t like the bill but didn’t want to stop the discussion yet.

"I’m not happy about it. (But) I would rather have at least the younger kids, address the issue for them and do something about the obesity problem for the younger grades, than do nothing at all," Anderson said. "Frankly, that was my choice."

Emphasis mine. It's one thing to argue against this because of the state-vs-local-school-board control issue. But why should soda bottlers and vending machine owners be given a say in this? Let them manufacture something that's not pure sugar if they want to stay in the game.

At least the ads were entertaining

I'd say the final score of the Super Bowl was what made me cry, but this is really what did it.

On the other hand, Ameriquests' "Don't judge too quickly" ads were hysterical. "Cat Killer" was my favorite, if only because I could see a similar event taking place in my own house.

I don't want to hear what they would have done for a Jeep

This sounds like a health hazard to me:

Utah Valley State College students got more than they bargained for at a free car contest—vomit, soiled pants and dehydration was the price to pay for a ’95 Ford Taurus. The “Hold on to the Car” competition, sponsored by the UVSC student government, challenged students to hold onto a car as long as they can; the last one standing would win a used car purchased by the school.

“Some people were dehydrating, but that only caused more problems,” Bunderson said. “People were throwing-up and peeing their pants.”

EW. And for a 1995 Taurus? Are they that desperate for wheels? My fiance could have sold 'em his, with no bodily fluids required.

Does anyone even learn about comma splices anymore?

Misuse of the serial comma doesn't exactly get my Irish up, but never you fear, John Rosenberg is on the case:

O.K., I'm sure some of you are asking, what does the serial comma have to do with discrimination? I could be cute and say it reflects discriminating taste, but I won't. I could say that the anarchy of the NYT's punctuation reveals what happens when "rules" are so flexible they aren't rules at all, or if they are they are too confusing to apply consistently, and that, though a bit overblown, would be getting closer to what one's attitude toward the serial comma reveals about other (some would say more important) issues.

Using the serial comma can never cause confusion. Omitting it, as we have seen, often can. Thus if your "rule" is to omit it, you have to stop and consider whether every series you write is clear. The serial comma rule takes that decision off the table; if you use it for every series, you don't have to consider the clarity question on every one of them. Grammatical rules, in short, are very much like principles: the stronger they are, the more pauses and potential confusions they take off the table.

Grammatical rules which are currently out of favor in our educational system, not least for the reason that teachers can't be bothered to learn them. When I hear of stories like this one - anecdotal, but amusing - I have to wonder if those who oppose the "narrow" teaching of such rules are in favor of plenty of confusion in communication.

Barbie's ready to kick some Mujahideen butt

So this is the end product of all those years of sancitimonious liberals refusing to let their children play with anything related to the military or guns (or even learn the word "gun" in school). This is the end product of those folks trying to convince the world that it's child abuse to allow a boy to play with a toy gun or plastic sword. For when these "violent" toys are used in place of a real human being, the sharp-eyed folks at Associated Press are unable to tell the difference. The Command Post has the full timeline of events, and there's a nifty animation here.

The AP deserves every bit of the mocking it's getting right now, especially when many of those debunking this hoax were able to use their own kids' toys to do so. I love it when fact-checkers can say, "Confirmed by my 8-year-old son."

Don't miss the comments from that densely-packed and chaotic center of the universe, Fark:

See!? he's being held hostage by a miniature plastic gun! THAT'S why they don't let you take toy plastic guns on airplanes! And you all laughed at the TSA taking away GI JOE's 2 inch gun....

The stern expression on the hostage had less to do his imminent decapitation and more to do with his having been born blatantly bereft of genitalia.

Do not miss this Top Ten list, either. My favorite:

We have captured Rainbow Brite, and we will hang her as an infidel at dawn.

Can they hang Smurfette as well? She always annoyed me. Such blue trash, wearing those white shoes year-round.

Future Proofreaders of London

Most parents would be thrilled just for their child to read the encyclopedia, never mind to be correcting mistakes in one:

A schoolboy has uncovered several mistakes in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - regarded by readers as an authority on everything. Lucian George, 12, from north London, found five errors on two of his favourite subjects - central Europe and wildlife - and wrote to complain.

"By the time he had found five, I said to him that he should write to the editors to complain about it."

Father George hastens to add that his son is perfectly normal, interspersing bouts of reading the 32-volume encyclopedia with Playstation and Eastenders. But why should he protest? Any kid who not only devours the Encyclopaedia Britannica but catches errors in it should be proud to not be just like all the other kids.

I'll have a blue January

Yesterday, I got out and spent an hour shoveling my car out from in front of my house. I live at the end of a one-way street with parking on both sides, and once I was cleared out I realized that the once-plowed street was quickly becoming impassable from neighbors digging their cars out. So I moved my car a quarter-mile away to the Blockbuster parking lot, which was the closest spot that was relatively clear.

This morning, I got up, put my ski bib on over my workout clothes, hiked all the way to my car, and on to work. It was pretty tricky, because it was still dark, many sidewalks weren't plowed, etc. I figured I could get by with just my snow boots coming home, though, because some snow would have been cleared away, right?

Wrong. This was the last thing I wanted to see at 5:00 today, but it's what I saw:

In case it's not clear from the photo, it started snowing again at 4 pm. That's my car in the parking lot. It took me an hour to get home, and then I had to clomp home in my ski bib, roads nice and wet again, and the street on which I live darn near impassible/imparkable once again.

Yeeks.

Rearing young capitalists

I recently saw a commercial encouraging Americans to stand up for more arts education in schools. It's not one of the Americans for the Arts commercials, and I can't find it online. I wish I could find a link to it, though.

In the ad, you see a man (suspiciously preppy-looking and well-dressed) playing violin on a tree-lined suburban street. A soccer mom walks by with her well-fed and well-dressed young son. As they pass the "street musician" (who looks right out of Eddie Bauer), the mom smiles - and the kid sneers, stares at the violinists, and says, "Get a job!"

The music comes to a screeching halt as both violinist and mom stare in horror at the kid.

What you're supposed to take away from the ad: If children don't have art classes in school, they won't respect the arts in real life.

What I actually took away from the ad: I don't know, because I was laughing too hard to think about it. Had I seen this little scenario transpire in real life, I would have laughed even harder.

My life

Well, I've worked 48 hours already this week, and I'll be working tomorrow as well. I'm at the computer checking email, and keeping my cell phone nearby, tonight, because one of my co-worker's is still plugging away on something and needs to call me later.

Yeah, I know - great life, ain't it?

But hey, here's what I get to look at as I sit hunched over a computer for the nth time this week.

Mama's Boy: Pippin keeps me company as I blog.

An angel and a dragon protect some very strange books.

Alice and the Cheshire Cat ponder their escape from the birdcage.

This is not what "encouraging kids to develop all their assets" means

Next entry in the "It's ridiculous what's acceptable in public schools today" contest:

Students at a Palo Alto middle school learned more than school officials ever expected when a recent "career day" speaker extolled the merits of stripping and expounded on the financial benefits of a larger bust.

He told the students, "For every two inches up there, it's another $50,000," according to Jason Garcia, 14.

Yeeks. The school admins insist the only problem here was that the substitute teacher who was present didn't stop Fried from speaking on these topics, although Captain's Quarters would beg to disagree:

Parents demanded an explanation from the school, who blamed the episode on a substitute teacher not cutting off Fried when he went off on his tangent. Left unanswered is why a 64-year-old man thought that such a topic fit within the confines of a middle-school discussion. He had listed the topic on his handouts, so the subject didn't come from the students in the class. It seems that Fried has a little problem and probably lacks the judgment to be around minors.

Yes, as in, eighth-graders. Would you like to hear that your eighth-grade daughter had been told that it would be a good idea to start saving up for breast implants? Didn't think so. Nor would you have wanted your early-developing daughter to have felt self-conscious in class. (The refreshingly obscene Right Thinking From The Left Coast says Fried's comments could have been worse, had he wanted to spread equal-opportunity job tips.)

Reached at his home, Fried said he understands that some may have felt he crossed the line, but he stood by his overall conduct. His remarks were part of a larger presentation entitled, "The Secret of a Happy Life," which he's given at the last two career days. The talk is aimed at inspiring kids to find happiness by settling on careers that they love to do and are especially equipped to perform.

Given what Fried thinks is appropriate career advice for eighth-graders, that last phrase could be interpreted a few different ways, don't you think?

What's good enough for the Almighty is good enough for us

The best satire is virtually indistinguishable from real life:

DOVER, Pennsylvania - The Dover school board has raised eyebrows and ire across Pennsylvania and the country after requiring math teachers to offer 3 as an acceptable value of Pi. Pi is the name given to the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, commonly accepted to be 3.141592, though the actual number is believed to go on endlessly, without repeating.

"Listen, I go to church on Sundays, I tithe, I don't need this," said Timothy Ernesto, a 10th grade math teacher in the district, "I need to get these kids ready for the rest of their lives, the SAT's, the ACT, the whole alphabet soup of testing they'll face before college. On top of all that, I have to teach an 'alternate reality' flavor of mathematics? I'm going to need my summer off!"

Good heavens, I am such a geek

Here I thought my stepfather was the world's biggest packrat, but he's been beat. It appears that the Internet never throws anything away, even evidence of my geekiest (and previously married) days:

From: Kimberly Swygert Raines (swygert@gibbs.oit.unc.edu)
Subject: question about string-to-number conversion
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Date: 1996/02/15

i have a question about using C++ to read in data from files which are not white-space delineated (in fact, some of the data will be in Fortran's scientific notation (-1.456e+2, for example, and some of the data may come from dialog boxes). we are unsure at this point as to how to read this data in. cin won't work, and while we have gotten hold of some sample programs that utilize the "atoi" command, it's only in the context of the argc and argv commands, and i think those are only needed if we run this on UNIX (which we're not). can someone supply me with some info on atoi, as well as any info about reading in string data? i may not be explaining this too clearly, as i'm part of a research group that's just now learning c++. we haven't found too much in the documentation that we have.....

any info would be appreciated

kimberly swygert
swygert@gibbs.oit.unc.edu

Oh, yes, this was from my "trying to master C++" days. As well as my "I'm so cool, I don't need to use capital letters" days. Yeeks. On the plus side, it wasn't long after I posted this email that I started my first (now-defunct) web site that was all about me, freedom of speech, and industrial music.

Diary of a mad teenager?

True-crime junkies like me are always looking for weird tales of mayhem and murder. Variables such as teenage angst, familial hostilities, wicca, gothy depression, and the internet never fail to ratchet up the weird factor, as the tale of Rachelle Waterman demonstrates:

The teenage daughter of a woman whose body was found in a burning van on Prince of Wales Island has been charged with her mother's murder, along with two men that she knew, according to authorities.

Lauri Waterman, 48, of Craig, a community of 1,200 about 220 south of Juneau, was killed early Sunday. Craig Police Sgt. Mark Habib said Lauri Waterman's daughter, 16-year-old Rachelle Waterman, was arrested late Friday, although she was out of town when her mother was killed. No specific information on her involvement was available, but she was to be arraigned Saturday in Craig District Court, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.

She faces first-degree murder charges along with two men arrested in the case.

According to some, Rachelle is an "ideal" child - and an honor student. Unluckily for her, though, the entire world gets to check out her grammatical skills, because she has a journal - and it's online:

Well I'm going to anchorage tomorrow morning, huzzah for going to hot topic! ^_^ it shoudl be af un trip besidse the massive amounts of caluculus I have to do and nobody can help me cus nobody knows it :P taht kidna sucks but oh well

not a lot else going on, I sprained my ankle monday but it's a lot better so I'm still playing, that's what a brace is for. Unfortuantely I might be getting sick, which sucks but I have some flu stuff. though it did suck today in school when I had a migraine from about 9am-6pm.

And so on, misspelled word after misspelled word. Most days, her mood is listed as sick, tired, or depressed; me, I would have selected "whiny" as the appropriate label for most posts. She claims to have gotten in trouble with the folks for having wicca books around. And, allegedly after she had been made aware that her mother was dead, she posted this:

Well back from anchorage and it was an okay trip. I got kinda sick but oh well

Did shopping, played v-ball (got 5th, bah), and that's about it. Not much to tell, well I got these incredibly awesome boots that go up to my knees, I absolutely love them. will post pic later

Five days later - and one day before her arrest - she mentions that her mom has been killed, and that the police are taking her computer. I haven't had time to slog through the 4000+ comments from that post, but I'm sure there are some interesting comments on there (Barista has selected a choice few, though, and Wizbang has the best post title). Here are the unhappy teenagers in court. And the Alaska State Troopers' press release has some additional information about Lauri Waterman's last, horrific minutes.

Update: Glassdog is not impressed by Rachelle's tales of woe. As one commenter notes, "Further proof that you can never trust a Wiccan Hot Topic Patron that can't spell simple words."

And Michele notes here in my comments:

Do NOT slog through the comments. Lots and lots of ugly, pornographic images inserted therein.

I'm not surprised. In fact, I'm only surprised that LJ hasn't disabled the page yet.

Update #2: From AlarmingNews comes this take on the story, which focuses heavily on the LJ aspect of thing.

For several days, the Web site was quiet. Then came stories about Waterman's arrest and arraignment, some of which mentioned the journal. Since then, it's become a hot spot...Most [of the comments] seem to be written by teens and young adults. Many are glib, some are heartfelt, a few are disturbing and a number are obscene.

This is a no-filter, no-editors world where people speak their mind in sometimes profane outbursts. Sometimes, they don't really have all that much to say, but feel compelled to comment anyway...

"No-filter, no-editors world"? That's rather ominous phraseology to describe pages on which people are creatively exercising their freedom of speech. What, are we supposed to be scared of blogs and online journals now?

Happy Halloween!

Remember that WA school board that cancelled Halloween, so as not to offend the myriad real-life witches that live nearby? Uh, well...oops.

Halloween Cat - gif files, a free pattern, even a yoga pose (for humans, not cats).

Best. Halloween. E-Card. Ever.

Finally, the Halloween spirit:

Friday catblogging: Classic photos

Haven't had the chance to take any recent photos, but here are a few of my favs. First up, Pippin when he was still "Nelson" as a ward of the local shelter:

Next, me, thrilled, holding Pippin on the day I brought him home (Valentine's Day of this year):

Finally, Pip and his older sister, happily birdwatching together:

Number 2 Paws

Catblogging hits the big time:

In the vitriolic world of political Web logs, two polar extremes are Eschaton (atrios.blogspot.com), a liberal, often anti-Bush site with a passionate following, and Instapundit (www.instapundit.com), where an equally fervent readership goes for hearty praise of the Administration.

"It brings people together," said Kevin Drum, who began the cat spotlight last year on his own blog, Calpundit (www.calpundit.com). "Both Atrios and Instapundit have done Friday catblogging. It goes to show you can agree on at least a few things."

Have we gone from, "Why can't we all just get along?" to, "Why can't we all just cat around?"

The NYTimes mentions Lawrence Simon and the Carnival of the Cats, from which I was linked for the first time ever. I can't believe that the first time there's a set of links that could lead NYTimes readers to N2P in three clicks comes about because I posted photos of kittens last Thursday.

Silly, but I'll be happy for any additional traffic that wanders this way. Come for the cat-blogging, stay for the test-defending.

(Via Outside the Beltway)

Meow meow meow meow, pt 2

My Friday catblogging has not gone unnoticed: Lawrence Simon of This Blog is Full of Crap is hosting Carnival of the Cats this week, and last Friday's post featuring five kittens is on it.

TGIF

This has been a very productive week, work-wise; not quite so for blogging, or anything else (you should see the pile of laundry in the bedroom). My brain is rather fried at the moment, so here's a list of unrelated things - some education-related, some definitely not - going through my head.

Do any colleges in Oklahoma cover "Lessons Learned From The Debacle That Was Prohibition" in history class?

Hey, I'm a fan of Febreze, too - but I'm tactful about it. What is it with crazy teachers and their obsessions with smells?

The California College Republicans - talk about a marginalized group - have had it with Rock the Vote's alleged "non-partisanship," and their fake draft scare.

According to Common Sense and Wonder, a French deputy believes that English as the primary world language won't last, and recommends that all French schoolchildren be taught Arabic instead. Yeah, that'll fix things.

If you're going to take a shot at Ann Coulter, you'd better have good aim. Because if you miss, all you're going to do is enrage her.

I'm a cat-lover. But even I think this is a tad much. Then again, I thought "Friendster" was silly, too.

Bittersweet has the best response to those Brits who think they need to tell us how to vote.

The Cranky Professor notes a growing disenchantment with the PTA, and I don't blame him for wondering why only "one voice" can be heard.

FInally, I just have to say that the current crop of movie actors doesn't do much for me (and no, it's not just because I'm getting old; I've always been this way, more or less). Brad Pitt does nothing for me. Johnny Depp just looks messy. Viggo Mortensen is too much of a peacenik. And few of them could turn my head, even for a second.

But the old-time movie actors - back when men were men, who could sing and dance as well as act - really turn my head. If Colin Ferrell approached me at a party, I wouldn't be distracted. But if a man who looked like Gene Kelly walked through the door - and smiled at me:

...my affianced fidelity vows would be seriously put to the test.

Friday catblogging

Here's what I saw, last night at the intake center, when I opened the cage containing Kirsten, George, Chris, Eddie, and Betty:

Here's what I saw a millisecond after I put some canned food in the cage:

Hungry little buggers, they were.

Need a cat? Go here!

Update: Welcome to everyone from Carnival of the Cats! To find all my previous catblogging pictures, enter "catblogging" into the search engine on the right-hand side of the page.

Also, please note that many, if not all, of the catblogging photos were taken with a camera phone, hence their less-than-stellar quality.

Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel

The education-related news of late has been a tad...strange.

I would have killed for this job when I was a kid. I doubt I would have given the thumbs-up to asparagus salsa, though.

I never knew voodoo was this popular in Japan, much less among school principals.

I remember sweating to death during those long August band practices in South Carolina. I do not remember, however, any band instructor being dumb enough to think that this was a good way to cool us all off.

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch" may be a cliche, but it's one that St. Mary's College apparently never learned.

My, Philadelphia makes the national news with such classy education stories. And it's not the first time this school made the news in this way this year, either.

The freak dancing controversy has reached upstate Washington! Rebellious students are planning to have an alternative dance that will most likely feature some freaky stuff. Best line: "'It's kind of ridiculous they are saying this is sexually explicit' when every dance, even the bunny hop, can be so, said Corbitt, a Kamiak senior."

If any of my Devoted Readers know how to do a sexually suggestive bunny hop, can they teach Dave and I how to do it before our wedding receptions? Man, my grandmother would faint.

Update: And then there's the Children's Center of San Lorenzo Valley, which is fed up with grant cuts, and no longer interested in Tupperware parties.

Figures lie, but some more than others...

When someone admits that the statistics they're using to "prove" their point are false, but it's all for a good cause, well, them's fightin' words:

A Rockville animal-rights activist has sent out a mass mailing to property owners in Garrett County, Md., stating they should not allow bear hunters on their properties because 40 percent of them are drug addicts, drunks or mentally unstable.

"My personal opinion is that anybody who goes out and shoots helpless animals has a psychiatric problem," said Mr. Hightower, 82, a former hunter and World War II veteran. "Logically, statistically if you look at a sample of the regular population, certain people will have some kind of psychiatric problems."

Oh. Yeah. That's logical. And statistically sound. To make an opinion about a mental condition you're not qualified to diagnose, and extrapolate that the condition is true for a certain portion of the population in question (about which you really know nothing) and then to send out an unsolicited mass mailing to complete strangers using numbers you admit are false....yeah.

And it's supposedly the hunters who are mentally ill?

This is why statistics get a bad rap, and why most people who read them are soon snoring with boredom, under the assumption that the numbers are horse puckey anyway.

This is also why I reassure people, when mentioning all the animals I've lived with and animal shelters I've worked for, that I'm not actually an animal-rights person.

Don't let the sweet look fool you - Bubba could kick your butt

The work schedule is kinda crazy right now - I didn't get home until 10 pm last night, and I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to do this weekend. I should be able to post, but I can't promise to answer email too promptly, nor to necessarily use all the lovely suggestions all of you are sending my way. I apologize if you sent me something juicy and haven't yet gotten the honor of a reply.

In fact, I have to skip out on my volunteer work this evening because of work, but here's a bit of catblogging to tide us over:

Lawrence of the erstwhile Amish Tech Support provides the best of his "catcam." Don't miss any photo of Edloe, who is so large she has developed her own gravitational mass.

Down South, we grow 'em big, and we name 'em "Bubba."

The blog CatOutLoud comes to you courtesy of a feral cat rescuer.

Cat unsuccessfully chases bird, through house - a photo essay.

When Cats Attack! - guaranteed to make the blood run cold.

Over at Meryl Yourish's place, it's Kittypalooza.

Finally, when cats and computers mix. I must say, my Pippin loves watching websites scroll by.

The most he can hope for is to become a literate cabbage someday

Harry of ChaseMeLadies.com is a British teacher in the midst of writing report cards who sounds just about fed up with kids. I hope he's not ready to snap - but I do love his way with words:

Writing their reports at the moment. Revenge! That will wipe the smiles off their nasty little faces! A lot of teachers give everyone top marks for everything, but I see it as my duty to say quite clearly "Your child is an illiterate cabbage," if this is the case. "He is in the advanced class because no one has ever failed him. Nevertheless, he speaks English like a dog."

In Hong Kong a school report is simply a fire-and-forget missile: you send it to the parents, and that is the end of it. In Italy I had to give everyone the highest grades possible, just to keep their appalling pushy mammas off my back; otherwise I’d have them turning up in person to hound and badger me. Some of them were actually aggressive, convinced that anyone who dissented from the view that their child was a genius must be motivated by malice. Very often I was motivated by malice, but that is not the point. In these reports I can say only that their whelp turns up late and acts the goat, spilling things and irritating me greatly.

Wrangling the polls

Chris Correa reflects on whether we should listen to journalists at all when it comes to polling results, as NPR suggests that most journalist might be "innumerates:"

One of the rarely admitted secrets about journalists is that many of us are functional "innumerates" -- another way of saying "mathematically illiterate." Oh sure, we can add and subtract reasonably well. But with some exceptions, journalists generally don't know, understand or aren't interested in numbers. As for more complex subjects such as statistics and probability, well... many journalists would be hard pressed to tell the difference between "average" and "mean."

Chris says "mean" is the arithmetic mean, while "average" could be any measure of central tendency (mean, median, or mode). I confess I've never heard "average" used for anything other than the arithmetic mean, but then I'm around statisticians all day, and we're pretty precise. Has anyone else ever heard of using that to mean a general measure of central tendency?

Anyway, the rest of the NPR article is quite good, and supplies a few guidelines for interpreting poll results yourself:

One of the clearest explanations of what is trustworthy and what is less trustworthy about polling comes from professor Kathleen Woodruff Wickham of the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

What is the raw data? Do the math yourself, if you can.

To which I'd add:

1. Is the group representative of the population to which it should generalize? In plain English, that means if you want to know how the US college-age student population feels about something, you survey a large sample of US college students. Sound intuitive, but you'd be amazed how many researchers attempt to generalize to a population from which they have neglected to sample. Surveying a group of college students will not tell you who is going to be elected President this year, because (a) college students skew more left-wing than the rest of the population, and (b) 18-24-year-olds don't vote to the same extent as older adults.

2. How was the poll collected? Even if the sample is not self-selected, finding people through telephone vs. door-to-door vs. direct mailing vs. email is going to get you very different populations. Plus, if the topic of the poll is emotional (Lord knows the current election is), getting information over the phone vs. over the internet vs. face-to-face may produce different results.

3. How forthcoming are the pollsters with the raw data? Bottom line is, if it's not posted on the web, you should be able to email them or call them to get the information, and they should be happy to provide it. If they're not, be suspicious.

I took an entire course on survey sampling in college, which is a tad much for anyone who's not going to spend their life doing that. But I enjoyed it.

Update: Tall, Dark, and Mysterious has comments. I have to admit, blogs like his make me wish I was single (hee).

When you decorate your home with crosses, dragons...and little red-white-and-blue elephants

I've discovered some gorgeous new (to me, anyway) blogs out there, including Australian group blog A Western Heart, which had me at "Hello," or rather at, "As-soon-as-the-photo-loaded." They do not claim to be goth, but try to tell me that photo represents anything other than a gothic sensibility. I also adore their mission statement:

We represent a broad section of western political and social belief, from Centrists to the Right, but are united in our devout belief that western democracy must be actively defended and championed, from threats within and without that seek to erode our hard-earned rights and liberties.

We are universalistic and inclusive. We write in the altruistic hope that it will make some small difference.

Right now, with Australian elections this weekend, everyone is linking to Mike Jericho's Count On Us Today, an anguished plea that, should "isolationist" forces win in Australia, we Americans remember the "old," braver Australia for the fighter she is (much more Aussie election coverage from Tim Blair).

The contributor's blogs are equally gorgeous. Bittersweet, in particular, seems like something a vampire would create if she had a hankering for blood and a distaste for Ted Kennedy. And then there's misanthropic goth-magnet Tiberius Alethius of the Asylum, which asks the burning question - "Which is worse - zombies or hippies?" He posts his replies to the obnoxious letters he gets from goths, which would only be marginally less stupid if they were spelled correctly. (The letters, I mean; not his replies, which are not subtle, not meant for delicate ears - but definitely not misspelled.)

On that note, go look at this goofy t-shirt I designed at Zazzle, which allows you to design and sell apparel. Goth, yet Republican. Yeah, there's a niche market. Something tells me my t-shirt is going to be a one-of-a-kind fashion statement.

Update: Woohoo!

The fine art of decision-making

Information about decision games appeals to me, because this is how my fiancee and I make pretty much every decision in our household:

"Who has to shovel the steps?"
"Let's flip for it."

or

"Are you going to dinner with me and my friends tonight?"
"Do I have to?"
"I'd like you to. Here, let's do rock paper scissors."

Etc. We play fair, and we do what we agreed to do if we lose (grumbling is allowed, though).

Anyway, I found these variations very amusing. First, there's the full-body version of decision-making:

MR told me about this full-body improvement on Rochambault (or "Rock-Paper-Scissors," as most of the world outside the SF Bay Area calls it): Bear-Cowboy Ninja. You start back to back with your opponent. Walk five paces, then whirl around and strike a pose.

Sound effects are optional, but add greatly to the game.

This sounds ideal for deciding, at 1 am, who has to pay for the next round of drinks.

The second entry is the "Geek-with-far-too-much-time-on-his-hands" version:

Unlike the first variation, the addition of alcohol will probably NOT make this version more enjoyable. Even sober, it's tough to remember the rules.

Update: Via the World Rock-Paper-Scissors Society website (thanks, Nanto!), we discover that lizards play a version of this game, you can learn about it at Stanford University, and the theory behind it is the basis for a lot of video games.

I will confess here that, much as I love to play games like r-p-s, game theory and judgment/decision making were my least-favorites areas of statistics when I was in graduate school. On the other hand, dice, cards, and rock-paper-scissors definitely enhance the Stats 101 teaching experience.

If yew kan drahw this, yew culd bee an ahrtist!

This is for all those educators who wish we'd stop focusing so much on reading and math and spend more time on developing the natural artistic abilities - and self-esteem - of students.

You wouldn't expect to see a lot of misspelled words when you enter a public library.

Alquilar blames city leaders for not catching what she calls "oversights."

Sounds like Alquilar's artistic abilities - and sense of self-worth! - are quite intact, despite the fact that she misspelled the names of some of the greatest artists and scientists of all time.

The Miami Herald has more:

Before Miami artist Maria Alquilar completed a $40,000 ceramic mural recently installed outside a Livermore, Calif., library, she might have wanted to step inside to consult an encyclopedia.

''This work is a fantastic work,'' said Alquilar, perplexed and frazzled by all the fuss. "It was meant to bring particularly young people an understanding of the interlacing of cultures.''

Emphasis mine. How dare we boogewasay types criticize her artistic creation by nattering on about correct spellings, of all things! So what if this creation was for a library - one cannot place such limits on the artistic impulse!

And it gets better:

Though the artistic faux pas was noticed within days of the installation in March, the city of Livermore -- a suburb outside San Francisco -- agreed this week to pay an additional $6,000 plus travel expenses for Alquilar's return to fix the errors.

''I wasn't concerned with the words, they were signposts,'' meant to stimulate an interest in learning, Alquilar told The Herald on Wednesday night. ''People that really love art, they wouldn't even have noticed it if they hadn't pointed it out,'' she said.

Emphases mine, again. My, somebody was paying attention the day the teacher said that "Your self-esteem has nothing to do with your accomplishments!" in class. Alquilar is refusing to fix the mural until she gets an apology for the library pointing out that she screwed up? People who notice spelling errors in the names of great artists must not really "love" art? Unbelieveable.

My more cynical Devoted Readers will not be surprised at all by Alquilar's former profession:

Alquilar, a former schoolteacher, was among four artists who applied for the job. It took her a year to create the mural.

She says that shifting the focus to an ''inconsequential'' oversight and away from the work misses the point entirely. ''I didn't go to the book and flip it open, because you don't do that when you're sculpting,'' explained Alquilar, whose works have been displayed in the Smithsonian Institution and the Rockefeller Collection, among other museums and galleries. "And I didn't even think of checking because I thought they were right.''

Emphasis mine, once more. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why someone who shows such a great loathing for looking up "inconsequential" facts in books is now a "former" school teacher? Something tells me she wouldn't have been a fan of NCLB.

The one valid point she makes here is that someone else really should have noticed the errors in the work before it was installed, two years after it was completed. But her outrageous defense of making the errors in the first place suggests that she would have been less than open to criticism of any kind, at any point in the "artistic" process.

I can't watch videos on my (old, slow) home computer, but apparently there's one here:

http://www.foxreno.com/news/3788214/detail.html

The Fark posters, ever the lively bunch, point out that Ms. Alquilar might have seen the light if all the news article about this mess had misspelled her name. Another local poster, eatcaramels, took this photo of one of the misspellings:

The prevailing theme seems to be - $46,000 for that?

Finally, from her website, we read a description of another library mural:

The words and the quotes along with the esthetics of the work is designed to engage the viewer at the basic esthetic level to the intellectual and spiritual levels if the viewer takes advantage of the vast wealth of material that the library has to offer.

I guess I don't have enough of a love of art to understand that.

Update: Don't miss the followup, here.

Meanwhile, the fathers are saying, "This beats the hell out of wrapping paper."

A double standard is in place in the Kanawha County (WV) school district, where 10-year-olds are warned not to be sexual harassers - but are then encouraged to sell lingerie through catalogs:

If her son were caught at school with pictures of women wearing lingerie in suggestive poses, she’s certain he’d be in trouble. So why is he selling items from a catalog that includes racy women’s underwear and similar pictures for a school fund-raiser?

“My son is 10 years old,” she said. “He hasn’t had sex-education classes yet. We haven’t even had ‘that’ talk with him. He came home with a paper that told him how not to threaten girls, and telling him not to draw sexual pictures. But this? This is R-rated.”

By this, she means the Avon catalog, which some of you may not know has really branched out from lipsticks and perfumes. Avon ain't selling flannel nightgowns and granny panties, let's put it that way. In the past, 10-year-old boys would have neither been encouraged to sell such goods, nor exhorted to be sexually sensitive. It's not an improvement when they're asked to do both.

Update: This explanation (from "Anonymous") appeared in my comments section last night:

I am that mother who was upset about my children being asked to sell lingerie for their grade school. I want to set the record straight for the people who are wondering why I was upset. I don't have hang-ups about the human body and I own quite a bit of sexy lingerie. Also, I think Avon has wonderful products and have no problem with Avon selling lingerie to adults.

My children have been hurt in the past because I stood up to the principal and I don't want them to be hurt again either but I had to speak out this time, although anonymously, because I feel that the school should follow the same rules they make our children follow.

Hummingbird hands

Sorry for the non-bloggage. All my spare time has been spent scrubbing down my house, raking leaves, and dressing the cats in little bowties in honor of the impending visit by my parents tomorrow. That'll be the first time they find out about the ring. Gonna be quite a visit.

It's also my birthday tomorrow, and in honor of it one of my coworkers brought in nuclear-strength three-layer brownies today. The three layers are (1) rich fudge brownies (2) thick buttercream icing and (3) dark chocolate. My fingers are trembling so bad from all the sugar (the recipe calls for four cups) that I'm finding it difficult to type. Seriously.

Bloggage will resume once life, and my pancreas, calm down.

Update: Devoted Reader Independent George says:

So wait - you told us before you told your parents? Aww, shucks. I bet they won't be happy to hear that, though...

You know, I didn't think about this until I read his comment, then I realized - I told you guys before I told anyone. Seriously. I didn't tell everyone at work until Monday, and then I was so busy at work that I didn't email all my friends until Wednesday! And no one in my family knows yet!

So all of my Devoted Readers were the first to know. It's telling that while I was able to wait to tell about this, I simply could not wait to blog it.

Update #2: Not only did the cats completely reject the bowtie idea, but my older, more jaded cat looks distinctly unimpressed by the ring:

Symptoms: Euphoria, and a strange urge to go buy Brides magazine

I've been trying to blog this afternoon, but I keep getting distracted. I kept seeing this glint out of the corner of my eye, down near my keyboard. When I finally looked down at my hands, I noticed that I'd developed an odd, sparkly growth on the fourth finger of my left hand. I thought I'd snap a quick photo if it with my camera phone and post it on here, on the off chance that some of my more Devoted Readers might recognize it and give me some medical advice:

(To answer the first three questions I bet people will ask:

1. No, we haven't set a date
2. Yes, these packages are far too cheesy
and
3. YES, we plan to have one of these at the reception.)

They're such angels when they're sleeping

I love having a camera phone, so that I can snap candid photos, like this one of my "kitten" (14 pounds) happily dreaming away:

Insane, but in a good way

Tuesday, October 5th. Animal Planet. I am so there.

Austin Stevens: Snakemaster

Nothing will stop Austin Stevens from trying to get that perfect photo. In Austin Stevens: Snakemaster, camera-bearing Austin wades through swamps and into deep caves teeming with bats, scorpions and spiders; he zooms along dusty trails in Australia's outback on a dirt bike; and he braves perilous white-water rapids and waterfalls. And the danger doesn't stop there! Once he reaches his goal he must face venemous snakes, avoid their lightning-fast strikes, and set up for the perfect picture. With several clicks, Austin's photographs capture the beauty and diversity of these adaptable reptiles. Each episode features a new snake, a new adventure, a new photo op.

Check out the show's trailer where he dives (without thinking) off a three-story boat to grab an anaconda in the Amazon. Wow. And the most I've ever done is knock a small child aside so that I could be the first to hold a baby alligator during the last leg of a swamp tour.

Thanks to Devoted Reader Mike D. for the link.

Non-testing roundup

A list of the stuff, other than work, that has been distracting me from blogging.

1. Amphigory cosmetics and jewelry - I absolutely love these guys. Not only are they two of the nicest people I've ever corresponded with, but (a) their makeup is top-notch (pale skin? no problem!), (b) their jewelry selection is stunning, and wonderfully categorized (Crosses, Creatures, The Graveyard, Magickal Symbols, and Miscellaneous), and (c) portions of sales from many items benefit the Great Cats of Indiana Foundation, a rescue organization near them that has lions, tigers, cougers, etc.

2. Allahpundit - One of the better, funnier political pundits out there, who has been extensively covering RatherGate. I love the fact that his blogroll is divided into Great Satans, Little Satans, and (for female bloggers), Satans That Make Allah Feel A Little Funny In The Pants.

Other blogs to which I am now addicted: Just One Minute, The Kerry Spot, Captain's Quarters, Powerline, and Polipundit. And this is one of the best descriptions I've ever read of the power of the blogosphere.

3. Wide-eyed op-eds by new college students about how gosh-dang different college is from high school. This one from the Montana Standard takes the cake for sheer gee-whillikers-ness. You mean you can go to the bathroom whenever you want in college? Really?

There are also strident guidelines from university learning centers, "joke" lists that are pretty accurate, no-nonsense lists that are funnier than the joke lists due to extreme understatements ("Distractions can be numerous because or [sic] opportunities to become involved in non-academic activities."), and other assorted chatty lists of useful advice.

Bottom line: If you're a college freshman, and you haven't yet figured out that you have to take responsibility for your education, well, you can't say you weren't warned.

4. Kingsnake.com. All reptiles, all the time. Great list of herp breeders and supplies. And the t-shirts aren't bad, either (though I can't find a current link to them). I thought I had posted a photo of my dearly-departed Arizona Mountain King, Tiago, to these forums, but his photo is actually on the About.Com exotic pets gallery pages.

5. SomethingAwful.com. Obnoxious, extremely-non-PC humor. This diatribe against anti-Republican protestors splits my side every time I read it.

6. The latest US Census Bureau statistics (yes, I know I'm a geek). Not only are the reports insanely detailed missives on topics you've never thought about in your entire life (vehicle use surveys from Montana, anyone?), but there's a wealth of information there for anyone who likes to debate political issues and their impact on society.

Making over the goths

Right now, Fox is showing an episode of "Renovate My Family" that is a very odd, low-rent version of the Munsters. You remember - they had the one normal teenager? Well, this is a family with a goth mom, goth mom's perpetual fiance, two goth kids - and one normal little blonde teenybopper. And the normal teen supposedly wrote to Fox to get them to remake her mom, get her mom to marry her fiance, and knock the house down and rebuild it.

My boyfriend thinks it's all staged, and I have to agree. The "goth" decorations in the house are all Halloween decorations from Spencer's, and crap like that. I know a lot of adult goths, and adult goths do NOT dress their house up like "every day is Halloween" (even though that's a great song). Adult goths have spent a tad bit more money on their surroundings, or they've personalized their house with their own artwork and sculptures, or they collect gothy stuff (like Halloween Barbies) and display them in nice china cabinets like any other collector. Real adult goths do not buy every skull sold at the mall and hang them from the chandeliers for everyday decorations. That's for teenagers.

The decor that is being presented to us as "weird" and "fearsome," I could put together for $50 over eBay. Nu-uh. The coffin in the den (which doubled, supposedly, as the normal teen's bedroom) had a paper freakin' skeleton in it, for pete's sake. NO self-respecting adult goth clutters their home with that crap, except when throwing Halloween parties. This is an example of a good goth decorating scheme - it's not prepackaged, and it's definitely unique (note: her bedroom is pink). My bedroom has angel sconces, purple walls, purple velvet everywhere - and no skulls. My dining-room is dragon-themed - but no skulls.

Hmph. Talk about reinforcing negative stereotypes.

Second, we're supposed to believe the mom will marry her fiance just because the show's host say so, and in the time and manner chosen by the hosts? Right. The family can pack everything they want to save in two hours, and leave everything else behind, potentially to be thrown away? Right. And a team of workers will rebuild a house from scratch in one week? Right. The mom will stop being goth, even though she's a musician who works from home, and doesn't need another look? Right.

The more I watch it, the more I'm convinced they took a normal-ish family and staged the whole decor-goth thing. The better to play into stereotypes about how goths (a) think it's all about skulls and coffins and (b) really want to be "normal," if someone would just help them change.

Update: On the other hand, they just showed the family after their makeovers, and they all look so uncomfortable in their new hairdos/makeup/outfits that maybe it is for real. Certainly, any goth I know would look that awkward if you separated them from their black eyeliner (okay, some of the stereotypes are true). I'm still not buying the paper skeletons, though.

Update #2: Okay, the house is pretty dang spiffy. I love the iguana reptariums, for one thing (although I would have felt weird about someone else handling my reptile). It's my dream to have some nice ones built that are comfy for snakes, yet beautiful to display. The Japanese bedroom is lovely, and the master bathroom looks like something a real goth would design.

But those pimped-out cars? Oh, honey, no. If the skulls went in the trash, those tricked-out hubcabs should go right in with 'em.

A toast, to our alma mater!

Hee hee hee. What is it with the Southwest and bizarre school-related news? If it's not tortillas at graduation, it's shot glasses at homecoming:

Officials at Rio Grande High School [NM] aren't getting a buzz from the school's homecoming memento. Nearly 100 shot glasses etched with "Dreams Will Come True 2004" were handed out in advance of the celebration last week — until the principal got word of it.

"We emphasized this is not for drinking," Chavez said.

Uh huh. For toothpicks. Because we all know how teenage kids like to ride around and...collect toothpicks. What do the Homecoming King and Queen win? Matching flasks? For toting around mineral water, I'm sure.

Testing news roundup

Like many others in the blogosphere, I've been following the forged documents story. Astounding. Absolutely astounding. The power of the blogosphere has been decisively demonstrated (and by bloggers that I love - like Powerline and LGF - no less). Now, all I want is for the idiotic forger to try again, perhaps with a document "proving" that Bush is dumb because he got low scores on the computerized GRE back in 1974. Then I get to jump in and be the next SuperHero Blogger Putting The Big Media In Its Place.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Anyway, here's a roundup of testing news from this week:

----

A recent study by Caroline Hoxby of Harvard found that charter school students in Massachusetts were performing better on reading and math state standardized tests. More information can be found here. The same caveats apply for interpretation of the results - it's far too soon to conclude that charter schools raise scores. It's also interesting to see the charter school opponents trot out the same old objections. Such as "Opponents of charter schools argue that the schools siphon off public dollars and top students from regular public schools. " As though the parents who pay those public dollars and raise those top kids don't deserve to have a say in how that money is spent, and where their kids are educated.

----

A computer mixup sends California students to class without their STAR scores. ETS made a boo-boo with the zip codes, and now district officials are frantically trying to route scores to where they need to be.

----

The NY Daily News supports Mayor Bloomberg's decision to end social promotion for fifth-graders. Current fifth-graders have until April - and $20 million allocated dollars - to learn enough to score higher than Level 1 on the state's standardized exams.

Money quote: "Bloomberg and Klein were vilified by many last year when they adopted a similar program for third-graders. Then the kids got into the swing of it, parents pitched in and test scores rose. Forty-one percent of the children who attended summer school made the grade, compared with just 19% the year before. The fifth-graders now will have the same chance, and there's every indication that with a full year's help, they'll do even better. "

----

All the hurricanes of late may be helping little Floridians learn their alphabet (and how to tape windows), but the weather patterns are wreaking havoc on test schedules. Some administrators are asking for FCAT scores not to count towards funding this year, not least because some teachers are homeless and some classrooms still don't have roofs.

----

Fellow blogger Stephan Sharkansky (Sharkblog) gets press as an opponent of Seattle's Families and Education Levy. No, he's not anti-family, nor anti-education; he's just anti-spending-money-with-no-accountability:

For Sharkansky, one of the most outspoken levy critics, the primary concern is the lack of regular, thorough program evaluations that demonstrate how the levy money was used and how it improved student achievement. Sharkansky said he has pored over pages of public records, including the levy's 2003 progress report, and thinks there is little data to show whether levy money was spent effectively.

"What does that mean?" he said. "That doesn't say much."

Shark also got his own op-ed in the Seattle PI, here. Best comment: "Even as city leaders acknowledge they've done a poor job of managing the past 14 years of levy proceeds, they expect Seattle families to give them 69 percent more money in exchange for only vague promises that they'll somehow do a better job this time."

----

The Texas A&M Battalion sticks its neck out for sexually-segregated classrooms:

The bottom line is the same: Separate the girls from the boys.

This trend has such a positive impact on public schools that the U.S. Department of Education is looking to change parts of Title IX, the law that bars sex discrimination.

It seems to me that the same arguments used against homeschooling - that such students do not get exposed to the same material as in "real" schools, and also become "undersocialized" - get used in arguments against single-sex classes. As though education that in any form separates students from the "mainstream" will leave them deaf, dumb, and socially maladjusted.

The three L's: Lipstick, liner, and lashes

This Guardian (UK) article about marketing beauty, and sex, to 10-year-old girls is rather frightening, not least because the beauty biz would like to see the market invade the schools:

Earlier this year the Association of Teachers and Lecturers called for age restrictions on magazines such as Bliss, Sugar and Cosmo girl on the basis that they were "full of explicit sexual content" and "glamorise promiscuity".

Retailing toiletries to teenagers has suffered neglect, the report adds. "Makeup, in particular, is often an impulse purchase, so placing teen brands in unusual locations such as in vending machines in schools, cinemas and bowling alleys may persuade consumers into buying something they had not previously considered."

Emphasis mine. The British teachers' unions react, unsurprisingly and appropriately, with horror:

Many schools already discourage pupils from wearing makeup and some ban cosmetics. The two main teaching unions reacted with disbelief to the suggestion of installing vending machines in schools.

A spokesman for the NUT said: "Pupils have always tried to get around bans. But the purpose of school is education of the child not an opportunity to increase their sex appeal."

Exactly. According to the survey cited, "63% of seven to 10-year-olds wear lipstick, more than two in five eye shadow or eyeliner, and almost one in four mascara." We can assume (I hope) that some of this is play-time makeup, with little girls rooting through Mommy's stash to have fun with red lipstick. But to allow, or encourage, kids this young to wear makeup in public - especially to school - sends a very bad message. Girls that young shouldn't view makeup as anything other fantasy stuff to be limited to one's home. And while cosmetics are more appropriate for older girls, perhaps even in school, allowing them to buy it on the premises sends the message that it's not only acceptable, but somewhat required, and teenagers can do without that message.

(I realize that I may sound like I'm contradicting myself, as evidenced by a post I made last week where I defended the rights of goth middle-schoolers to wear black nail polish. But I have no problem with, say, schools banning nail polish for all eighth-graders, on the grounds that such sexual attractions are not yet acceptable. What I have a problem with is schools allowing the girls to wear red, but not black, nail polish, on the grounds that red polish for young girls is healthy while black, somehow, is not.)

Getting out of the rat race

As someone who used to videotape rats as part of a psychology project, and who admires the self-employed, I found this cartoon particularly amusing (and apt):

Number 2: The Perfect Pencil

No real reason to post this; it's just not every day that the Number 2 Pencil makes the news:

The No. 2 pencil is ideal for computer-graded tests because it contains the perfect combination of lead darkness and hardness and is reflective enough to be picked up by a scanner, said Tim Loomer from Scantron Corp. The No. 2 is in between the No. 1 and the No. 3 in darkness and level of shine, making it the pencil of choice.

"If you did a mark with a 1, 2 and 3 pencil, each one will get progressively darker; as you go from 1 to 3, each one will get progressively shinier; and each one will get progressively softer," Loomer said. "The number 2 is the ideal blend for the technology that optical mark readers use, because it's got the perfect amount of reflective quality from the graphite and it is also really easy to erase."

Must have been a SLOW news day at the Associated Press...but I think I've got my new tagline. "Number 2 Pencil - the ideal amount of reflective quality!"

College follies roundup

Well, I'll be out of the office tomorrow (Ozzfest! Woo!) and busy on Friday, so let me leave you with a few golden oldies just in case I don't get a chance to blog again until the weekend. Here are a few of my favorite past posts that, in honor of the back-to-school season, represent my favorite provocative or amusing stories that involve college students (NB: no guarantees on link status).

College students falling out of bed in Buffalo (9/24/2003) - be sure to read ALL the comments, which are hilarious.

Bondage in Iowa, of all places (11/6/2003)

An impassioned plea for the First Amendment on campus (11/11/2002)

Harvard and the Nine-Foot-Tall Penis! (2/24/2003)

Where have all the men gone? (5/5/2003)

When students come together to graduate separately (5/19/2003)

and finally,

Big Bird does a great job! (4/26/2004) - read the comments to get the full story.

Also note that posts from before May of 2003, which I switched to MT, do not have comments, but feel free to add 'em now!

The UK: Where the men are men and the sheep have long memories

And here I thought that, as a psychometrician, I was doing real, necessary, important, meaningful research.

Who was I kidding? Here's where it's really at:

Lonely sheep, like lonely people, are much happier when they see pictures of friends and family, according to a study published yesterday. A group at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge has found that the sight of a friendly face reduces stress in sheep.

Prof Kendrick has found that sheep, while apparently ruminating mindlessly, could be dwelling on long-absent flock mates, mothers or even shepherds.

Oh, man. The dirty jokes just write themselves.

Dave Barry wins the gold in Olympic humor

I'm not spending a whole lot of time watching the Olympics (I'm still cursing myself for turning off the TV before I saw Paul Hamm make his comeback, but I had a 6:30 flight the next morning), but I am reading Dave Barry's Olympics columns. And they are good.

On the taxi drivers of Greece:

It's not just that the taxi drivers are aggressive. It's also the Greek Motor Vehicle Code, which, as far as I can tell, consists of a single law: No Stopping. The motorists here do not stop for anything, including other vehicles, stop signs, red lights, pedestrians, buildings and the Acropolis. If you're driving here, and you see something in your path, your sole responsibility, as a Greek motorist, is to honk your horn at it. After that, whatever happens is not your fault; if the Acropolis, having been duly warned, fails to move, that is tough tipiyokti for the Acropolis...

Once you're in the taxi, the real excitement begins. The driver, in addition to honking, is usually very busy talking on the radio and the cell phone, smoking, writing things down, yelling and gesturing at other motorists. I was in one taxi where the driver got off an expressway at the wrong exit, so he reversed and drove the taxi, at perhaps 40 mph, down the ramp backward onto the expressway. Seeing my facial expression (EEEEEEEEEEEEEE), he gave me a big smile, as if to say: "Can you even BELIEVE we are doing this?''

On women's weightlifting:

The weightlifting competition I saw was the women's 63 kg class. I'm not sure whether this means the actual women weighed 63 kg or the weights they lifted weighed 63 kg. Or possibly the temperature in the weightlifting hall was 63 kg. There's no way to know for sure without finding out what a ''kg'' is, and my belief, as an American, is that if I have to start understanding the metric system, then the terrorists have won.

On the US Basketball Team:

But before you get too cynical about the Olympics, let me stress that not all the athletes are taking performance-enhancing drugs. Some of them appear to be taking performance-reducing drugs. I refer here to the U.S. All-Star Billionaire Men's Basketball Team...

Listen: If we let Lithuania beat us in basketball, it's only a matter of time before France does. And if that happens, we basically have no choice but to use nuclear missiles.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Behold, the latest round-up of education, testing, and school news that will make us all roll our eyes, if not in horror, then in amusement:

Brits spend more dough on beer than books. My guess is that's not the case here only because college towns tend to serve up lots of low-end beer at very cheap prices (a prize to the first person who can tell me what a "Blue Cup" is!)

If you're planning on moving from the US to the UK and becoming a citizen, best to watch a lot of Eastenders before you go.

Won't you sleep better at night knowing teachers can be "enriched" so easily?

We couldn't make it up. Here's the Los Angeles Times on professional development courses that some California teachers are taking to renew their certification and earn higher salaries: "Sara Telona learned the choreography for Mexican folklore dances, mastered the words to folk songs and took a crash course in marimba and xylophone playing. . . . To complete the course 'Sharks: Myth and Facts,' the teachers must watch a National Geographic video about the great white shark and read three books. Then, they answer several fill-in-the-blank sheets and write an essay on how their lives would be affected if sharks became extinct. . . . [The] 'I'm So Stressed I Could Scream' course taught . . . stress reduction techniques and helped with classroom management. Instead of disciplining her slightly rowdy class after lunch, [one teacher] started reading a book to calm students and herself."

It's always good when I can read the words "furore" and "airy-fairy" in an article that's critical of public schools (in New Zealand).

Finally, it's funny how the same people who oppose the "top-down" regulations of standardized tests don't seem to have a problem with refusing to let kids run and play:

Games where kids chase each other - tag or even cops and robbers - are generally banned in Natomas Unified's elementary schools. No grabbing or pushing is allowed. At Natomas Park, students can only toss and catch a football - tackling or blocking isn't permitted. But the no-contact rule applies beyond the grade-school gridiron.

"One person can be a little stronger than the other," she said as she walked away.

Yes, and recess is when kids are supposed to find this out, and the strong are supposed to learn how to play nice with smaller kids, not avoid them entirely out of any irrational fear of contact.

Away from my desk

I'll be away from blogging for a few days. I have to fly down to Hilton Head Island for the funeral of a family member. Keep an eye on the education news for me while I'm gone, will you?

Oh say can you see

Hiyo, everyone. I'll be posting more later today because I have to work (on a Sunday - ugh). But for now, I just have to say that this is one of the cutest things I've ever read:

Michael Phelps grabbed his head in disbelief, then thrust his left fist in the air. He's an Olympic champion - just like Mark Spitz. Phelps began his quest to overtake Spitz's 1972 record haul of seven gold medals with a dominating performance in the 400-meter individual medley, breaking his own world record Saturday night and claiming the first U.S. gold medal of the Athens Games...

He climbed the podium and leaned over to have a gold medal draped around his neck and an olive wreath placed on his head. During "The Star-Spangled Banner," Phelps removed the wreath and held it over his heart - much like he would a baseball cap - and quietly mouthed the words.

I just think that's adorable. Here's a 19-year-old kid, winning gold medals in the ancient city of Athens, being given the highest honor the Greeks can bestow, and because his momma told him to always take off his cap when the national anthem was played, he put his olive wreath over his heart. I love it.

Meow meow meow meow

In honor of Friday the 13th, I offer you - catblogging! (take that, Instapundit). First up, three beauties from the animal shelter where I volunteer.

Charlie - pudgy body, tiny voice, gets what he wants with his bedroom eyes:

Next, the stripey orange Tanner:

Third, the aloof (but not feral) Russian Blue, Peter:

And what would Friday the 13th be without a black cat? At least, one that's got some black in him. Here's my big galoot of a "kitten" (10 months) going after a fly:

(The photo quality might not seem the greatest, but these photos were all taken with my cell phone camera, which makes them automatically cool.)

The most wonderful time of the year!

For all of my Devoted Readers who are also Devoted But Weary Parents:

Top ten signs it's time for your spawn - kid(s) - to go back to school:

10. You've cashed in their college fund to rent them an apartment - on the other side of town.
9. The TV picture tube has blown from the continued use.
8. Not only have they forgotten everything from the previous school year, but quite a bit from the year before that.
7. You think it's about time you got to use the computer again.
6. Their chores have been reduced to bring me a beer and go play in the street.
5. The summer camp you shipped them off to sends them home.
4. You now understand why other species eat their young or kick them out at an early age (and wonder how difficult it would be to barbecue them).
3. It's definitely time for them to learn about condoms, environmental activism, masturbation, and the evils of capitalism (obviously, a public school).
2. It been a few months since the last teacher having sex with a student scandal hit the news.
And,
1. That big yellow bus keeps showing up in front of your house each morning
(and it's not The Partridge Family or a prison road gang).

No, "Quinlynne" is not a word

I just have to share this with you, not least because I know some of you out there teach in public schools and have most likely run across some, er, inventive names for kids. There's a webpage called Bad Baby Names on which a woman (named Diana) has cut-and-pasted the most hysterical lines from online forums for new parents choosing baby names, and then posts her commentary afterwards. It is utterly hysterical, and yes, you MUST read all 15 parts.

I can't pick a favorite exchange, but here are a few (comment from clueless parent in italics , responses from Diana in bold):

------

We have one daughter, Haley Matisse. We're trying to decide which girl name to use next....
The list we can agree on (at least to consider) follows:

We'd like to use Shaye, Grace, Raine or Catherine as the middle name if possible.

Oh where to start!?

d) Gentry. (sigh.) MyddleKlas? Boodgewassey? (I'd suggest Hegemony but I'm afraid someone will take me up on it.)

------

What do you think of the name Allegra? It is Italian and means cheerful & lively.

Side effects are low in seasonal allergy users and may include headache, cold, or back pain. People with kidney ailments should consult their doctor before taking Allegra. Look, it's just your bad luck when a product or TV character or popular porn star or Rick Santorum ends up having your name, but if they came out with it first....just walk away.

------

Here is a sample from Names Through the Ages by Teresa Norman.
Female names:

Adhelm-noble helmet
Beorn-warrior, brave
Cenwig-brave in battle
Dunstan-hill stone
Eadmund-wealthy protection
Eadulf-wealthy wolf
Godric-Gods ruler
Heahstan-tall stone
Tunric-town ruler
Tunwulf-town wolf

I don't really need to say anything here, do I? I mean, really, we're mostly adults here, we're reasonable people - do I really have to say anything about a name that means "wealthy wolf" and sounds like chronic sinus congestion?

I'll be honest - I have no freakin' clue what these people are trying to accomplish.

------

my hubby got on a kick of the names rhyming, believing we would have no more. lol, we are due in nov! so, i am in a tight place. my dd is kaesyn paige,(jason w/ a "k"), and my son is richard brycin (goes by mn).

i need a name w/ the "sin" sound, not the spelling! lol! i am not fond of jaxon, but my dh likes aryxon (erikson) and i am fond of tycen. ...

New naming rule: If in typing the name out you have to follow it immediately with another version in parentheses, because otherwise no one would have the slightest clue this was supposed to be a name and not Klingon for "Wax my forehead, supple wench," this is a bad, bad, woah bad bad name.

And with that - have a great weekend!

You can't spell "sex" without an 8-point tile

Ah hah hah hah ha!

It wasn't a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship Thursday. In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word "lez," which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament.

Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian. "There are words you just can't show on television," Scrabble Association Executive Director John Williams said.

ESPN is planning to broadcast Scrabble tournaments?? Okay, that does it. We are officially a nation of slothful sofa lizards. It's embarassing to realize that Americans are willing to treat Scrabble as a spectator sport.

Wright, a 30-year-old concert pianist from Los Angeles, played the word and then drew two replacement tiles so quickly that the referee didn't notice at first. When he did, he said the slang term had to go. ESPN officials told Williams the word could stay, but the issue was that Wright had already selected new tiles.

"The ultimate absurdity is that you can't play the word 'redskins' on ESPN," he said. Williams spoke with Wright and his opponent, David Gibson, then called an emergency meeting of the Scrabble Advisory Board. The board unanimously agreed to remove the word. Wright then returned the two tiles he had selected and played a different word, Williams said.

The "Scrabble Advisory Board"?? Ah hah hah haaaa!

Wright, using more innocent words like feijoa (an evergreen shrub) and zebu (a domesticated ox), won the best-of-five final round in three games and pocketed a $25,000 prize. "Meaning has no consideration when I play," Wright said.

And a brave athlete you are, my man.

OK, maybe I'm not a school choice proponent after all...

Just what the NYC educational system needs....

Madonna is spending $US21.6 million ($A30.81 million) to set up a Kabbalah school in New York, reports Sky News. The school, to be named the Kabbalist Grammar School For Children - The K School for short - will teach primary-age youngsters about the ancient Jewish mysticism.

According to The Sun, parents who want their five-year-olds to attend the K School will have to face several hurdles. They must be Kabbalists before enrolling their child. The strict entry policy will involve an academic test for the child and a probing family interview. Parents will have to pay upwards of $US3,600 ($A5,130) for a term.

And the parents of K School kid won't be able to save money by shopping at Target, either.

Various and sundry

Just what we need - another standardized testing error. This one resulted in a six-month delay in reporting scores, which is pretty substantial.

RightWingDuck - new, funny, and setting themselves up for a lawsuit if they keep that Warner Brothers image on the front page (it's a great drawing, though).

Charter school laws, by state. The Center For Education Reform organizes it all here for you.

Michael Lopez wonders why pre-school teachers should be required to have bachelor's degrees.

Remember when I said earlier that some people would insist that we're already living in a time when kids do nothing except take tests? I didn't have to wait long to see that I was right. This editorial is a masterpiece of absurdity, logical fallacies, and whiny criticism; it's not funny, informative, or worth reading.

Lisa Snell notes that the Palm Beach Post works itself into a lather over the fact that 10 out of 34 schools that accept Florida's Opportunity Scholarship vouchers aren't accredited. The article failed to mention that while only 16% of Florida's opportunity scholarship students attend private schools with no accreditation, a good 60% of Florida's public schools have no accreditation.

Parents in New York are getting it. Joanne Jacobs is pleased.

After having frittered away two weeks on vacation, the slothful (heh) Reform K12 is back with an optimistic take on Philadelphia's "Declaration of Beliefs and Visions" for its students. They sound good to me, too.

shoeblogging

Oh my Lord, Coach is going to get ALL my money this fall. I was happy enough with their conservative stuff, but now they're getting funky.

Yes, the clogs below are Coach, and I must have them. If just 250 of you could hit the tip jar over on the right (heh)...

If you're going to do an (inside) job, do it right

It seems the "self-esteem-is-more-important-than-skill" mantra has reached outside the public schools, and into another sort of institution entirely:

In a policy shift so irrational it could only have been designed by the state prison guards union, 300 vocational education classrooms in state prisons California - where else?] were shuttered at the beginning of the year. This might be understandable if it were a cost-cutting move, but the state is saving little or nothing by closing the courses. The instructors who formerly provided inmates a chance to succeed in the outside world are now conducting self-esteem "modules" instead. These use workbooks hammering the sort of feel-good lessons that some prison experts believe increase, not decrease, recidivism (one can imagine the resulting thought process of an inmate — "I'm gonna be the best darned crook I can be!").

Because, as we all know, low self-esteem is the root of all evil, and never mind all those studies suggesting that inflated self-esteem and narcissism are highly related to both juvenile and adult crime.

I found this part to be particularly interesting:

The self-esteem lessons came out of talks between prison officials and the guards union last year. Cynics say its doomed-to-failure approach was intentional — that it was crafted in consultation with guards who either didn't believe prisoners could be rehabilitated or who didn't want something that might diminish their job prospects by lowering recidivism.

Hmmm, let's see, employees of an public institution deliberately putting ineffective programs in place in order to guarantee themselves a job - sound familiar?

I don't know about you, but I'll sleep much easier at night knowing that the burglar who's casing my house feels really good about himself.

Power outages

No bloggage today. I'm catching up on work, and I've got a lot to catch up on at home tonight, since our power was out all day yesterday. You may have heard of the torrential thunderstorms that hit Philadelphia, and let me tell you - the news stories weren't exaggerated. I was bolted out of bed at 7 am by thunder so loud it set off car alarms on our street. An hour later, the power went off; another hour later, and the main street in my neighborhood was under six feet of water, while employees had to swim out of a McDonald's about a mile away from me. A lot of businesses have closed down because the buildings were flooded and completed ruined. Our house is fine so far (thank heavens we live uphill from where everything was really bad), but it's been such a wet summer that we already had one leak in our roof.

Yeeks. Send dry thoughts, please.

(All of the photos below are businesses that are within walking distance, two blocks or so, of our house. My boyfriend and I don't know what we're going to do without our WaWa!)

A Snapple drinker who isn't made from the smartest stuff on earth

Oh, for heaven's sakes....

A 17-year-old Bronx high-school student wants the city to pay him $5 million because a Snapple vending machine fell on him at school as he shook it. Court papers filed yesterday charge Albert Salcedo suffered a broken foot and ankle in the incident on May 25...

Salcedo's mother, Diana Tineo, acknowledged that her son had sued before. He received $30,000 to settle a 1999 case in which he suffered facial cuts after he fell through a broken school fence.

Oh boy. So he's 17, has already dropped out of high school, AND is well on his way to becoming a professional litigant. Let me guess, when he "fell" through the broken school fence, he just happened to be in the process of trying to climb over it, right past the "Do Not Enter" sign, right?

Yeesh.

Non-testing roundup

Next week, we'll be back to our regular educational testing programming. But for now, a list of everything else that's jamming up my brainwaves.

Metal Yamulke (great name for a blog!) shows his Boston spirit by eviscerating an inane letter to the editor of the Boston Globe (thanks, Reginleif!). And speaking of Boston, I could have used this guide when I drove there a few years back. I found the highway patrol kind, but, to this lost Southerner who didn't understand the accents, rather unhelpful.

My long-distance crush on Hal Sparks is reaching life-threatening limits. I first noticed him on VH1's "I Love The {insert decade here}" shows, and now I'm dreaming about him. He's by far the funniest commenter they have; he's got this wildly-expressive face and a seemingly never-ended list of one-liners. I have an incurable passion for funny, smart, geeky dark-haired musicians with handsome faces, goofy demeanors, and a penchant for pop-culture humor. Luckily for him, my boyfriend also matches this description, but if I ever meet Hal, it's all over. (And yes, there is a LiveJournal fan site, where fellow crushees describe themselves as "Halapenos.") (And no, you don't need to point out to me that, given the comments Hal himself has posted to his website, it's pretty obvious we'd disagree mightily when it comes to politics. I'm aware of it already - just let me dream, would you?)

Got a problem with a local company? Be sure to post your tale on The RipOff Report. It's like NoIndoctrination.Org in that you can make public complaints, and the focus of your wrath has the chance to respond with a public rebuttal. Unlike NoIndoctrination.Org, though, there's a chance that an outraged customer might actually get his money back through Ripoff.

Need the latest metal music news? Dying to read what metalheads say when they get into an online pissing match over Vince Neil or Ozzy? There's always Blabbermouth, which has the latest news AND the great squabbles in the comments section. If you're suffering from a mullets-and-Camaros deficiency, go visit Blabbermouth at once.

I'm not as bad as my sister, who actually has a subscription to the National Enquirer, but I am addicted to celebrity gossip (although I suppose if you have a subscription, only your mailman knows how pathetic you are, as opposed to everyone at the grocery store). And I am ultra-addicted to Defamer. It's very catty, very sharp, and quite unafraid. Whether they're introducing stalkers to their favorite stars, or just belching with nausea at the latest rash of Kevin-and-Britney pics, they're always an entertaining read.

And speaking of Hollywood, this is just goofy. If you're really dying to see what Amish kids are like when they test the waters, rent the stunning, emotional documentary Devil's Playground (which was actually produced by two of the same producers of the upcoming reality show, Daniel Laikind and Steven Cantor. Go figure.)

That's all for today. Normal kvetching about testing critics, shoddy reporting and asinine educational theories returns tomorrow!

Update: Oh, I almost forgot! The blogosphere is abuzz over this paper by Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell, which is said to be the first scholarly paper about blogs. It's fascinating. It's concerned primarily with political blogs, but much of what it says applies to edu-blogs as well.

Update #2: Oh, and how could I forget this? Classic movies, re-enacted in 30 seconds. By bunnies. I can't really describe it; you have to see it for yourself.

Earning his (tabby) stripes

Awwwww....

Pfc. Hammer dodged bullets in Iraq . . . and lived to meow about it.

“He has been through mortar attacks,” Bousfield said. “He’d jump and get scared liked the rest of us. He is kind of like one of our own.”

I'll say it again: Awwww. Great photo, too. Hammer earned his rank by killing five rodents on base, including, allegedly, a rat almost as big as he was. The Fark comment exchange on this story was great:

Commenter #1: The cat was a Private First Class? How would you like to be a Private and be subordinate to the cat?

Commenter #2: ALL humans are subordinate to a cat. This is the first rule of cat 'ownership'.

Update: More on Pfc. Hammer, here and here, with some great photos. Plus, I don't know what the ranks are in the Coast Guard, but I bet Nemo would qualify for one.

A revision to N2P

I received a flattering email just the other day. It was from Kerry Constible, the motivated high school student who studied on her own for the AP History exam (she took the regular History course). Jay Mathews mentioned her in a WaPo article about a misguided attempt to prevent teachers from awarding "A's for effort." Ms. Constible let me know that Mr. Mathews actually made modifications, on the day of publication, to the text (including the part that describes Ms. Constible's academic record) in order to make the article more representative of the facts. I cut and pasted his writing before he made those changes, so what I had in the original post was actually incorrect.

So how did Ms. Constible know I still had the original text? That's the flattering part. She found me because when she Googles her name, my link comes up first (above Newsweek and the WaPo!). She made prominent mention of that in her email to me, so she must know that's the way to a blogger's heart.

Anyhow, all this is just to explain why I've gone back and deleted the original quote, and replaced it with the updated version.

First leashes, now chips...

Japan is always quick to jump on the technology bandwagon:

The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school.

The chips will be put onto kids' schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school. Denmark's Legoland introduced a similar scheme last month to stop young children going astray.

More about RFID tags here. Is this a smart move that will allow administrators to better keep track of kids? (Needless to say, this would be a godsend if a child were abducted, unless the kidnapper was smart enough to discard all the clothes and bags the child was carrying.) Or are we on a slippery slope to having implanted microchips, just like our pets?

Consider the human body as well. Applied Digital Solutions has designed an RFID tag - called the VeriChip - for people. Only 11 mm long, it is designed to go under the skin, where it can be read from four feet away. They sell it as a great way to keep track of children, Alzheimer's patients in danger of wandering, and anyone else with a medical disability, but it gives me the creeps. The possibilities are scary. In May, delegates to the Chinese Communist Party Congress were required to wear an RFID-equipped badge at all times so their movements could be tracked and recorded. Is there any doubt that, in a few years, those badges will be replaced by VeriChip-like devices?

Oh, the sacrifices I make for this blog

I suffer from tendonitis in my ankles and wrists, and it doesn't take violent motion to make them flare up; normal motion will do it. Things like raquetball and so forth are, of course, completely out.

Now I see that there are negative side effects to trying to catch up on all my blogging while still being swamped with work. I was on the computer so constantly today that I've developed tendonitis in my right-mouse clicking finger. I'm serious. (Stop laughing.) My finger is swollen to twice its normal size and I can't bend it. I can still type, barely, but otherwise moving my hand is painful.

Yes, I know. It's ridiculous. Now excuse me while I go figure out a way to make a teeny tiny little ice pack for my hand.

The question of nerds

It's not every day that Instapundit send me suggested links. Oh, ok, he sent it to other edubloggers too, and he linked to it as well. But I still feel special.

Anyway, the link is an fascinating essay from last year about "Why Nerds are Unpopular." It's a long essay, and hard to quote from since it's all very good. But here are some key grafs:

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?

A good question to ask.

One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids are unpopular because the other kids envy them for being smart, and nothing they could do could make them popular. I wish. If the other kids in junior high school envied me, they did a great job of concealing it...

But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.

I think that's a solid theory. Nerds, as the author puts it, don't realize that being popular in high school is a job, and they don't put the work into that other kids might. They don't really want to, in fact, because they have interests other than trying to make themselves beautiful, or athletic, or beloved by all. This would certainly explain the success of nerds after high school, where "popularity" can depend on an entirely different set of personality characteristics.

Or, it could be because real life isn't as similar to prison as schools are:

I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.

This is something that, I think, homeschooling parents instinctively realize, and educrats would like us to forget. It's laughable that the main charge hurled at homeschooling parents is that their kids will be "undersocialized," when, for a lot of kids, "socialization" at school involves either abuse for being unpopular or the ever-present drug scene. Homeschooled kids are more likely to be living in the real world than kids in schools, and less likely to suffer any abuse for not worshiping at the temple of "popularity."

This topic doesn't just make me think about homeschoolers, though. I think of the abuse that smart black kids, who are supposedly "acting white," receive in government schools, especially if they criticize the low standards all around them. I think about the harassment that Goth kids, who may not only be smart but too "different," get from others, especially every time a school shooting happens. It's not just about being a nerd anymore. At some schools, being unpopular and/or too smart can literally be hazardous to one's health. And that's a crying shame.

Update: Chris O'Donnell has some kind things to say about my post, including the tactful reminder that he linked to this same essay 10 months ago. Hey, around here, posts are accurate, insightful, or timely - pick any two.

One student makes a stand

Bryan Henderson, a student at Princeton High School, decided he was fed up with the constant stream of left-wing propaganda from his teachers. So he decided to shake things up a bit, and shake them up he did. Read his tale here.

Operation Tiger Claw, as his effort became known, got quite a bit of attention. It's refreshing to see a student so familiar with the Bill of Rights and court rulings on free speech. I also think the operation was in part a success, because it appears that some students may have learned that merely screaming "racist!" at anyone or anything they disagree with is a pretty immature and ineffective way to argue (although the one parent mentioned in the article seems oblivious to that reality).

Kudos to Brian for his efforts. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about him in the future. And I ask you - what have public schools become, when even the top schools like Princeton inspire such mindless rhetoric ("Anyone who wants to end Arab occupation is racist!") in many students, and such determined revolutionary spirit in the rest. Brian keeps a pocket copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with him at all times. I didn't feel the need to do that when I was in high school, and it's disturbing to realize that students need that protection now.

A new initiative to help those left behind

*Snicker, snicker*:

President Announces Controversial New Educational Initiative

"Certainly, we're all familiar with the examples of journalistic incompetence that seem to be increasing almost daily."

The satire then goes on to list example of reporters who missed the boat on war-related news, but it could just as easily list the number of reporters who don't understand tests yet pontificate on them, who rely on tearjerking anecdotes and unnamed critics for their anti-testing articles, who give public school defenders lots of ink yet leave little room for those who believe the schools should be reformed/abolished, and who routinely miss the opportunity to define crucial testing terms (like "impact," "bias," and "norm-referenced") in their zeal to print the "controversial" aspects of testing.

Continuing on in this vein, doesn't this mean that homeschooling is the analogy to blogging? Let's see, both are becoming extremely popular with "ordinary" people who want to bypass the power structure, in order to impart truth rather than ideology...yep, I'd say they're analogous. And the powers-that-be who believe bloggers are "irresponsible" and "inaccurate" (due to a lack of editorial bureaucracy) are probably the same who spread the word that homeschoolers are "backwards" and "uneducated" people who do a poor job with their kids (due to a lack of educational bureaucracy).

Believe it or not!

Work pressures have intensified, so I'll be off the grid until tomorrow afternoon or so. Until then, enjoy the tour of N2P's "Believe It Or Not!" educational museum.

Wonder at the naivete exhibited by this editorialist, who insists that all standardized tests are useless because early psychometricians were eugenicists who created tests that ignored "cultural and background differences" and "social or economic opportunity." He reports this with breathless spite, not realizing that we all know the background story, we all know eugenics hasn't been part of psychometrics for 50 years, we all know that testing now strives to be as culture-free as possible, and so on.

Gaze in mystery at the school districts that have hysterics over the idea of chaperones sipping one alcoholic drink while at dinner with a school group. God forbid that even responsible adults of legal age should be allowed one beer if any students are around.

Marvel at the teacher who thinks that wearing left-wing t-shirts every day to class is the appropriate way to get kids "thinking" about the issues.

Thrill to the efforts of this man's attempts to get rid of Colorado's state standardized exam. He considers the requirement that students meet state standards on reading, math, writing and science to be a focus on "superficial values." His suggested replacements are tests that differ by location (thus removing any basis for comparison) or letting educators judge whether students are proficient (thus introducing substantial bias and unreliability into the measures).

And finally, cheer for the kid who got trampled going for that Texas Rangers foul ball. He has now been rewarded many times over, and has hopefully learned the lesson that Americans do indeed have a sense of justice and fair play.

Update: Independent George complains, "What, no midgets or two-headed animals? What kind of joint is this?"

Never say I don't deliver. And here's another marvel, because I know some people who are too clueless to figure out how these doors work.

Assault with a deadly serpent

Rattlesnakes don't hunt people down indoors, but drunken asshats with pet rattlesnakes do:

Meet Rodger Hunter. Monday night, the Idaho Falls man, 28, went to his local pub--accompanied by his mother--to knock back a few. But after a tiff with mom Sheila, 47, Hunter left Chic's in a huff. This is when things got screwy. Rodger returned an hour later carrying his pet rattlesnake, which Hunter tossed into the crowded watering hole.

The snake has been confiscated. I hope it is returned to the wild, where it will enjoy a substantially more productive life than the boneheaded Mr. Hunter.

Standardized tests and Number 2 Pencils in the same day?!

I finally got the chance to view this, which numerous people (including Devoted readers like Justine and Judith) sent along. South Park has yet to do an episode about standardized testing, but until then, this will do. Although I hate sites that play music when you open them, I have to admit to wondering how a snippet of Amy Winfrey's "Number 2 Pencil/You're my favorite friend" song could be used to enhance the N2P reading experience. Wonder if she'd let me use it if I link to her from my front page?

Over and out

Well, Devoted Readers, it's finally time for a vacation. Destination: Garden City Beach, South Carolina. My parents have rented a shorefront beachhouse and I don't plan to do any thinking more taxing than figuring out how many shrimp and scallops I want on my "all-you-can-eat" platter. N2P will cease production from today until June 14th or so. I won't be able to check email while I'm gone, but I'll definitely do that first thing when I return, so keep those links and horror stories coming!

I had a friend take "goth portraits" of me over the weekend. Here and here are two of my favorites. The color one is unretouched (though it's slightly fuzzy from being resized). As you can tell by my skin tone, I'm going to be wearing A LOT of sunscreen at the beach. The only thing I want sizzling is my surf-and-turf platter.

(If you're sensing a full-on gluttony theme for my vacation, you're right.)

Until my return, you may find the following links amusing and provocative:

The Infinite Cat Project is an entertaining example of what happens when a computer geek is a cat lover. But don't miss this photo essay of what happens when the Infinite Cat Project goes horribly wrong.

I always suspected that as the Baby Boomers got old, they would do their damndest to make being old "cool." I was right. Up next: Keith Richards advertising liver transplants.

Ever wonder what Far Side cartoons would look like in real life? From Worth1000.com, one of the most addictive time-wasting sites ever.

I'm convinced this article should have an "April 1" datestamp on it. Surely, even French intellectuals are not pretentious enough to tell us all that we should stay in bed more often to avoid the "Anglo Saxon" work ethic.

Jeff Jarvis explains why you should get involved with Spirit of America.

More on the power of blogs.

Finally, A phenomenal interview with the last surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, as translated by blogger Chrenkoff. Final comment by survivor Marek Edelman: "...Those who say that you don't have to fight for freedom, don't understand what fascism is. I do."

Lies, Damn Lies, and the NYT

OOooo, the blogosphere is having a field day over a recent NYT article that depicts blogs as seldom-read, masturbatory diatribes written by pathetic, addicted people who live in bathrobes all day.

What's most amusing to me is that the NYT article itself demonstrates why it has a lot to fear from blogs, and why people are more and more often turning to blogs for hard news:

The number of bloggers has grown quickly, thanks to sites like blogger.com, which makes it easy to set up a blog. Technorati, a blog-tracking service, has counted some 2.5 million blogs.

Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves..

Oh, really? Given that the NYT provided no context for the "4%" figure, I'd say they aren't having much of a conversation with their readers, who are apparently supposed to think, "Hmph, four percent. That's a tiny number" and move on. But Bill Quick did the research and crunched the numbers to uncover the real picture:

Here's a few more numbers the fishwrapped fumblers at the Old Gray Hag can contemplate:

Blogs as a whole are more widely read than the New York Times by a factor of seven plus.

Those who live by the statistics, die by the statistics. The NYT might have hoped that bloggers would feel embarassed by this negative article; instead, it's more grist for the why-blogs-are-better-than-newspaper mill. As A Small Victory put it:

I do have a question for the people over at the paper of record: If blogs are so damn boring and unimportant, why do you keep printing stories about them?

Me, I'm just eagerly anticipating the day when the NYT publishes an article (probably by Michael Winerip) in which the idea that people might actually get information about testing and education reform from blogs is met with derision and disbelief.

Teenage filmmaker gets serious

From an article about teenage filmmakers comes this teaser:

Film is a powerful art form, as long as it isn’t too serious. “They aren’t received as well by the audiences as the comedies,” said Amy DeWeese, a Eureka High School senior and president of the school’s media club. The club is coordinating the fourth annual North Coast Student Film Festival Friday, from 7-9 p.m., in the Eureka High auditorium, 1915 J St. The event is open to the public, all ages. The cost is $3.

But, the audience didn’t get out of it what he had hoped.

Eh? What does that mean? I want more information. Certainly Myslin might have had a point. Did the audience not care? Not get it? Or were they just bored to tears by the mere idea of a documentary about standardized testing?

I, on the other hand, want to see his documentary.

When happy meals aren't so happy

Restaraunts are changing their children's meals to reflect a growing concern about childhood obesity:

The traditional kids' menu at casual restaurants - replete for years with burgers, french fries and fried chicken strips - is expanding to include steamed broccoli, black beans and rice, and grilled chicken.

A few of the biggest casual dining chains already are dishing out the healthier foods. Others plan to roll them out by summer.

However, I'm betting an attitude adjustment will be the biggest change needed to combat obesity amongst young people, as evidenced by the wailing and gnashing of teeth at a Boston high school that has gone crunchy:

When high school student Shirley Gomez heard the news yesterday, she froze, widening her eyes and gaping in disbelief.

''No way. They can't do that," said Gomez, as she and her friends made their way to the Burger King next door to Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester. ''If I wanted that kind of food, I could take it from my refrigerator at home. Why do I need to buy it at school?"

How many things are wrong with Gomez's statement? Let's see. First is the assumption that students have some sort of right to sugary treats on school grounds. Next is the fact that she's complaining about this when there's a BK Lounge next door. Finally, the same argument "I could take this from my refrigerator at home" can be used to justify providing healthy snacks as a rescue tactic for kids whose parents' shopping habits are unhealthy.

The approximately 130 vending machines in Boston public schools are stocked with a variety of high-fat fare: potato chips, brownies, cupcakes, and ice cream. Beverages include high-sugar sport drinks, iced tea, and juice.

''Who's going to walk around school eating an apple?" scoffed Brown.

Guess what, Brown? You are, now, unless you buy your own junk food in the grocery store. You say your parents won't buy it for you? Why, then, is the school obligated to provide it? As for that "image" issue, well, I'd suggest finding a way to be cool that doesn't involve eating tons of overpriced and fattening food during the school day. Any kid who derives their popularity and self-image from Doritos has got a bigger problem than obesity facing them later on.

News from the frontlines of "Poverty Rock"

This sounds like it would be a delicious and satisfying read for any overworked teacher:

One parent accused Joby McGowan of causing a tumor in her second-grader's brain by using a timer in class. Another told the newly arrived West Mercer (Island) Elementary school teacher that, at 6 feet 6 inches, he was "too tall" to teach little kids.

This after Mercer Island School Superintendent Cyndy Simms went to McGowan's classroom earlier this month to hand-deliver him a "letter of non-renewal."

But all's well that ends well; McGowan has been non-non-renewed and is now teaching second grade. Hopefully, he won't find himself in the position of having to take out a restraining order against a parent this year, like he did last year. If that happens, I hope we all hear about that, too.

Pipe down, Grandma

At my nephew's high school graduation a couple of years ago, the speaker politely asked everyone to hold their applause, as much as possible, until the end, so every kid could hear their name read. Instead, there was so much ruckus that the person reading the names had to stop the ceremony a couple of times. Some people in the stands had huge noisemakers and horns and all this really obnoxious stuff, and their behavior pretty much just got tolerated, even as others in the audience got really annoyed.

I'm thinking, though, that there's got to be a happy medium between that and this:

Imagine cops throwing you out of your own child's graduation just for expressing your joy.

That was when the officer approached, asking the teen's mother, father, aunts, and even his 86-year-old grandmother to leave.

Well, it made for a memorable graduation night, anyway.

Update: This, on the other hand, deserves a bit of applause. But wouldn't it have been better if all the graduates could have done it in sync?

Zombie Butts from Uranus!

Hey, whatever gets 'em reading:

Glenn Murray blushes a hearty shade of red when a cashier at a Chicago deli recognizes him: "Heyyyyyy!" the young man shouts gleefully -- and loudly. "You're the fart-man!"

Scholastic also publishes "Zombie Butts from Uranus!" by Andy Griffiths. It's the sequel to "The Day My Butt Went Psycho," a story about a 12-year-old named Zack whose back side is prone to detaching itself, running away and causing trouble.

Now, who can't identify with that?

(Thanks to Reginleif for the link.)

Bring the dance revolution to PE class

A free market sensation that might actually be good for you:

Forget the image of paunchy video gamers holed up in a dark room, surrounded by sticky Twinkie wrappers and empty soda cans. Dance Dance Revolution players burn extra pounds along with their quarters. Weight loss is an unexpected benefit of a game designed for dance music...

One pediatrician is so convinced of the health benefits that he's planning a six-month study of DDR and weight loss among 12- to 14-year-olds, in an effort to give the game credibility among physicians.

If the study is positive, will we see DDR in high school gyms? It sure as heck beats dodgeball and pullups.

Let me guess, this wasn't AP Chemistry

This student made it as far as high school chemistry, but I wouldn't say he's very "educated" - or bright, for that matter:

A student who drank a chemical from his high school lab on a dare was recovering in a hospital, but not before a scare. The student drank the unidentified chemical on a two-dollar bet at the school, said Nancy Smith, a UMC supervisor.

Lascano said Ector County Independent School District officials were still investigating.

If the parent complains that the school didn't put a disclaimer on every chemical in the lab (e.g., "DON'T DRINK THIS"), I hope the school sends 'em a bill for the cost of replacing the chemical.

The Great Books

From the College Board, a list of the 101 Great Books (all fiction). Bloggers like Michele and Damian have been posted the list with the books they've read in bold; I've done the same.

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights

Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie.
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

Diversions

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've become a foster mother. In addition to my two permanent squabbling "siblings" (shown here during a brief detente), I now have three adult cats and three tiny kittens to mother. The kittens are taking the most of my time, since I try to spend an hour or two a day with them out of their cage. They are too tiny to leave unattended, so it means I sit on the basement floor and read while they exercise their little legs.

No, it's not really an excuse for not blogging, but a diversion nonetheless.

Ah, the good old days

If we needed any evidence that school rules - and life - were different in the 1950's, here it is:

A woman whose stolen kiss in a long-gone era kept her out of the National Honor Society will be inducted 51 years late.

"There was a character issue there, apparently," Wagner said. "I had the point average. I had the activities. Both of my sisters had been inducted with the same grades and activities. Same with my classmates."

Can you imagine the howls of protest, the chaos, and the lawsuits that would ensure if "character" were involved in the choosing of honor society members these days?

As for Wagner, I'd say her character is just fine; she earned a college degree and is still married (48 years and counting) to the guy she was caught smooching.

Distractions, distractions

A list of things distracting me both from work and blogging:

The trailer for Shrek 2. I keep watching it over and over and over again, just for Antonio Banderas' rendition of, "Puss....in BOOTS." Giggle.

My shopping list. You see, a couple months back, like an idiot, I offered to foster some cats for the shelter where I volunteer, as long as the cages were provided to me. Somehow, I ended up agreeing to take three kittens and three adults cats from another shelter. They were on Death Row (sigh), so I couldn't turn 'em down. I need: Kitty litter, adult canned food, beds, and toys. The three kittens have already moved in, and were sacked out all night after I cleaned them and fed them.

Metal Yarmulke - who happens to be a Devoted Reader of N2P - is back and blogging. I eagerly await any future criticisms she has of me (just kidding).

In high school and colleges, I wore no other watch but Swatch. But I didn't wear this kind of Swatch. Even as a punk rocker, I don't think I would have been able to get away with this without my mom swatting me. After all, even New Yorkers can't handle it now.

From Worth1000.com, a photoshopping contest about phobias. I love this one.

Finally, my work is interrupted as I contemplate owning this dress, from DangerDame. I totally want it.

The "super stalker" teacher

This teacher's love of poetry - and one of her students - has landed her in hot water:

"It pleases me that you want me as much as I want you," read one of the 13 notes attributed to [Georgia high school English teacher] Carla Murray, 32. The notes were found in the [17-year-old] male student's locker after other students tipped authorities.

Albany Police will review the letters to see if criminal charges are warranted, Capt. Charlie Poole said Wednesday.

Is really bad poetry a crime in Albany, Georgia? If it's not, it should be.

Especially worrisome to officials were the notes written after the alleged relationship ended.

"I hate to see you flirting," one note read, and, "I'll try not to be super stalker for a few days." In another letter: "I hope you don't mind if I keep tabs on you. ... So if I look mad ... it's really sadness you're looking at."

Okay, yes, THAT should be a crime, too.

More like "show-and-run"

One Robert E. Aylor Middle School student (VA) showed some enthusiasm for show-and-tell, and the next thing you know, hysterical officials were evacuating everyone from the school. Gee, all the kid did was bring a foot-long artillery shell into the classroom:

“Any time you see something like that, you never know the shape or condition it’s in, if it’s a live round or not,” Aylor Principal Donald Williams said. “The student brought it to school to show his civics teacher.”

Welsh said the shell would not be returned: “This is the property of the Army. He shouldn’t have had it to start with.”

The kid probably shouldn't have opened up the shell on his own the night before, but he did that, too. Such zeal for historical artifacts is touching. Perhaps the kid should consider a career in curating or archeology when he grows up - if he lives that long.

Psychometricians could use some relief

From Safe Havens, by Bill Holbrook:

Fill in the spots, er, bubbles

The good news: Students at the Berkeley Arts Magnet Elementary School were feeling pretty good about the upcoming state standardized exams.

The bad news: They've all got spots.

Somehow, death and religion have become involved:

A sudden outbreak two weeks ago has left six students home sick with the virus, as well as eight students barred from school for three weeks because of their refusal to accept the vaccine...And for good measure, the outbreak comes just as students are taking state standardized tests which can label schools as failing if they fail to test enough students...

Health Officer Namkung counters that the virus has killed a “significant number of children” and that she is following standard public health procedures in dealing with the outbreak—which is defined by the state as more than five cases in one elementary school.

I thought kids had to have proof of vaccinations to enter public schools in the first place. Has that changed?

Round-up: Various things

Remember my post from a few months back about the California (where else?) senator who wanted to give 14-year-olds the vote? Well, that bill, SB 1606, just passed the state Senate Committee on Elections and Reappointment. Don't know what exactly that means for the bill's chance of success, but the fact that such an inane idea passed muster with any group of adults is a little scary. I have to say I love Right Thinking From the Left Coast's take on it: "And look, the idea of children voting is offensive. The reason they can't vote is because they are children, and therefore are idiots. They can't legally enter into a contract, but they can vote? Idiocy. If people in this state aren't interested in voting, then the way to get them interested is by fielding candidates who aren't a bunch of complete tools."

-----

In Great Britain, the National Foundation for Educational Research and the Department for Education and Skills have teamed up to study, and promote, a skill that doesn't seem to have much to do with education. But this type of research is certainly more interesting than crunching scores on educational tests, isn't it? And I wonder - will the "skills" in question lose their appeal when teachers start promoting them?

-----

A tribute to Mother's Day that notes the importance of ignoring "self-esteem" and displaying a zero tolerance for whining. A tip for mothers out there: This is one way to teach your kid proper bathroom etiquette.

-----

Finally, Steve Sailer has had just about enough of the current rumor floating around, disguised as research, which says that states who voted for Bush in 2000 have lower mean IQs than state who voted for Gore. Not only does Steve deflate the rumor entirely:

Hoax Update: The table of IQs by state spreading across liberal blogdom is purportedly based on the Ravens Advanced Progressive IQ Matrices test. Psychometrician Chris Brand tells me: "John Raven knows of no comprehensive State-by-State data for his test."

Case closed.

...he also points out the following attitude, which never fails to bug me, too:

Nothing demonstrates the hypocrisy of Democrats on the topic of IQ than the enthusiasm with which so many leapt aboard this bandwagon as a way to prove they were mentally superior to Republicans, despite, in the near-decade since the publication of The Bell Curve, having constantly denounced IQ tests as meaningless, racist, and evil incarnate.

The website which had the most to do with spreading the bogus graph now claims it was all a joke. Doesn't sound like Steve's laughing. Would these liberal "hoaxers" be laughing if, say, a rumor was spread that women's studies majors and Democrats all had demonstrably lower IQs? Or would that be termed "hate speech"?

Drop the snail, and step away from the aquarium

In Milwaukee, a Giant Snail Roundup:

Federal health officials have seized several dangerous pests called Giant African Land Snails from Wisconsin classrooms and have started a national search for the creatures, which reproduce rapidly, destroy plants and can transmit meningitis.

"They were very cool creatures," Joosten said.

HIV testing anxiety

Wisconsin is the first state to enact a new testing law, and it's just as controversial as testing of the 3 R's:

Wisconsin has enacted what appears to be the nation’s first law requiring students to be tested for HIV if teachers or other school employees can prove they were significantly exposed to the students’ blood while on the job.

The law, which critics view as an unwarranted intrusion on privacy, gives employees of Wisconsin public and private schools the same rights as emergency personnel, medical workers, correctional officers, and group-home workers to require blood tests under comparable circumstances.

Is this a "sensible protection for the men and women who are responsible for educating" young Wisconsinites, as a spokesman for Gov. James E. Doyle says? Or is it "a safety net full of holes," as the spokewoman for an AIDS education groups claims? The state's teachers' union supports the measure, which has the following requirements:

First, [the teacher] must prove that they had taken precautions to the extent possible, such as using protective gloves or eyewear, against exposure at the time of the contact. They must also produce a letter from a physician stating that they were significantly exposed, and must submit to an HIV test themselves.

I suppose the "precautions" part is so that teachers stop and think before mopping up any blood or body fluids; the one example given in the article, though, was a case in which the blood transfer was unexpected.

Bloodshot eyes and crampy hands

Apologies for the non-blogging. I've been spending my week perfecting code and wrestling with SQL data tables, and the results, while not pretty, are serviceable (much like my appearance, after a week of staring at the computer and downing more caffeine than usual). I'm not sure when I'll be able to resume blogging; possibly this afternoon, possibly this weekend.

But while I'm here, I just have to point you towards this surreal blend of zero-tolerance policies, disciplinary issues, and allergy alarms. Who knew Nutter Butters could be considered weapons of mass destruction?

And I also have to admit that not all my time has been spent writing code; some of it has been spent on the Orsinal website, which hosts a multitude of addictive Flash-based games. This one is the most addictive. I can't really enjoy this one, though; I spend too much time as it is in real life thwacking cats to make them move or sit still.

Hawkin's Island

John Hawkins of Right Wing News was nice enough to include me on his list of 10 bloggers he'd like to be stuck with on a deserted island. I'm flattered, even though the other four female bloggers get described as "easy on the eyes" and "hot" while I get described as "personable" and "brainy." The story of my life - despite my best efforts, I'm always The Professor, never Ginger or Mary Ann.

I mean, look at the new photo I uploaded for the site. (it's actually from last summer, but I've decided that I want it to be my main photo.) Does that look more brainy than beautiful to you? Okay, fine, it does. I'll shut up now.

Friday non-testing roundup

You know, it's Friday, sunny, and beautiful outside, and I don't feel like writing about standardized tests any more than you feel like reading about them. So the Friday roundup will be a bit more eclectic than usual.

I can't decide what's more touching about this story, the fact that the "pound puppy" defended his owner so bravely, or the fact that private donations have more than met the family's $4000 in veterinary fees.

So your kid's a vegan and doesn't want to dissect a real fetal pig in Bio? Get 'em a virtual pig. But is an 85 a virtual B?

Men are asking for "a little off the top" in Scotland. SWAP is angry, and on the case.

If you've been recieving emails about those dreaded camel spiders in Iraq, Snopes wants you to know that they're not dangerous, and really not that big. Not big enough to scare away all those reenlisters, anyway.

One of my favorite bloggers, Michele of A Small Victory, is taking a hiatus. It looks like ASV is finished; something new might pop up in it's place, though.

I donated to Spirit of America this week. Freedom of the press, indeed.

Finally, if you didn't watch the two-part Cecil B. DeMille program on Turner Classic Movies earlier this month, you really missed out. I love anything about the history of Hollywood (from the 50's on back), and it's heady to think of the days when one man could found a studio, direct silent films and Biblical blockbusters (pre-Hays code), and build his own private airfield in the middle of Los Angeles. Ah, to have made some dough in Hollywood back when land was plentiful and the federal income tax had not yet been revived.

Update: Oh, and this is an odd site. Human Descent=fun with genetic impossibilities and Photoshop. I particularly like the top photo from this page. That's how I feel most days - attitude of a tiger, body of a chipmunk.

A most dangerous couch potato

If you ever needed any evidence to support limiting your kid's access to TV, here it is:

Police in the southwestern Florida city of Fort Myers arrested...17-year-old Carlos Chereza, on Tuesday on a charge of soliciting to commit first-degree murder. Tipped by an informant that Chereza had offered to pay to have his mother killed, an undercover detective posed as someone willing to do the job, Fort Myers police said.

"Carlos stated that he didn't want anything to happen to the television," the detective wrote in the arrest report.

Yeeks.

The little girl who cried wolf

I don't know if any of you have been following the sad tale of University of Wisconsin-Madison student Audrey Seiler. I first encountered the story on Fark; the Farkers were suspicious because her story seemed very, very strange. As it turns out, the Farkers were right.

Long story short: Audrey faked her own kidnapping. She was missing for five days, after walking out of her apartment at 2:30 am. Ultimately, she was found in a marsh a couple of miles away. A huge force of police and volunteers mobilized to hunt for her during the entire time she was missing. After her discovery, Madison police listened to her story, and then discovered that she had previously purchased the knife, duct tape, rope and cold medicine that she claimed her assailant used. Someone had used her computer while she was "missing," and Audrey was also spotted around town during that time. The result is that she has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of obstructing officers, as the Madison police force has officially concluded that her kidnapping was a hoax.

There's no denying she has some mental problems. But I think this sends the wrong message:

A college student who staged her own disappearance last month will try to reach a plea agreement and avoid trial on charges she obstructed officers, her attorney said Thursday. Audrey Seiler, 20, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore from Rockford, Minn., faces up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine for each of two misdemeanor charges. Her attorney, Randy Hopper, appeared on her behalf Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court...

"She obviously is dealing with a lot of trauma related to this, she's going through a very difficult time. She's having both some emotional and some physical problems to deal with as you might expect somebody who's gone through something like this," Hopper said after appearing in court.

Somebody who's "gone through something like this"?! Excuse me, but Audrey put herself through this. Her actions, while wacky, appear not only deliberate but premeditated, and she lied to the police afterwards. Why shouldn't she be charged with obstructing? Since when does "having a difficult time" absolve one of responsibility?

Oh, and the great "crisis" that allegedly triggered this?

The criminal complaint depicts Seiler as a young woman upset by a fading relationship with her boyfriend, Ryan Fisher. Friends said the two had been fighting, and Seiler's roommate, Heather Thue, told officers that Fisher did not pay as much attention to Seiler as she wanted. Seiler's mother told police her daughter had not been herself lately and was "extremely needy" of Fisher.

Three days before she disappeared, her laptop was used to log onto Fisher's e-mail account and read exchanges "with romantic overtones" between him and another woman, according to the complaint.

Audrey was getting dumped, so she snooped through her boyfriend's email. And the result was a five-day search that cost Madison about $96,000. Please explain to me why leniency should be the approach here. Plenty of college women get dumped every year. Plenty of students are under stress. But that's almost $100K of taxpayer money wasted because Audrey deliberately made all of Madison worry for several days.

She needs help, all right, and jail time may not be the best option for her, but neither is a slap on the wrist. Some local residents feel sorry for "the little lost soul," but I don't, and neither did one resident of Audrey's hometown, who put it best:

Lisa Wangstad wasn't as forgiving, and noted that police say Seiler bought duct tape and rope just before disappearing.

Wangstad, whose daughter attended high school gym class with Seiler, said the hoax would make it harder in the future for real kidnapping victims. And she predicted a difficult time for Seiler's parents.

Presumably as they begin to realize that their daughter doesn't understand that it's wrong to fake your own kidnapping after being dumped.

Unlocking the great mysteries of the Peeps

Now THIS is science. Don't miss the "Medical Miracle" - the delicate separation of conjoined quintuplet Peeps. My, what a wonder it is when the scientific method is combined with far too much refined sugar.

And in addition to Peeps research, we have studies on how well Peeps themselves can do research. Who knew that Peeps get bored with studying and like to fool around in libraries, just like college students?

Militant math

Thanks to the narrow focus of this blog, I don't often get to post on matters of national security. But Bill Evers circulated a story that seems to have flown under the rader of the mainstream media:

At New York's Kennedy Airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school math teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

Attorney General Ashcroft said,"As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."

Math teachers, be careful out there. Ashcroft's got his eye on you.

Want your kid to go to med school? Buy 'em a Gameboy

Amusing correlation of the day: "Doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and performed the task 27 percent faster than their counterparts who did not play video games:"

The study on whether good video game skills translate into surgical prowess was done by researchers with Beth Israel and the National Institute on Media and the Family at Iowa State University. It was based on testing 33 fellow doctors — 12 attending physicians and 21 medical school residents who participated from May to August 2003.

The study "landmarks the arrival of Generation X into medicine," said the study's co-author, Dr. Paul J. Lynch, a Beth Israel anesthesiologist who has studied the effects of video games for years.

Perhaps operating tables could have score counters attached, so that top surgeons can enter their initials? And I wonder if, 25 years ago, there were studies done to see how much better expert surgeons were at the board game Operation?

Ken must be so disappointed

Natalie Young wore a "Barbie is a Lesbian" t-shirt to her high school in NYC and got suspended for it, despite the lack of a formal dress code. And now she's $30,000 richer because of the situation. Despite the young woman's pride in the "message" this sends to openly-gay students, I have a hard time believing that we should view the t-shirt as a legitimate political expression.

The education department has agreed to develop guidelines relating to student dress and their "expression of sexual orientation." I wouldn't want that job.

Baby diets and banned scores in Britain

News from Britain: If you thought Americans spoiled their kids, it seems that the British are just as bad.

Eight out of ten British parents admit that their children have worse diets than the parents did at their age, but few of them hold themselves responsible:

The survey showed more than half of children do not eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables each day. The average age of the children whose parents were questioned was 15 months. Just over half of the parents said their child was a "fussy eater".

However, only one in five parents blamed themselves in any way for their children's eating habits.

You'd think parents who go so far as to read parenting magazines would be smart enough to understand that the parent is the only one responsible for the diet of a 15-month-old.

With a diet this bad, British kids need exercise. But it isn't worth it for them to become proficient at any sport, because the newspapers won't print scores for fear of embarassing the losers:

The Sheffield and District Football League has forbidden its members from sending scores to the Derbyshire Times after the newspaper reported how an under-nine team was "trounced" 29-0 in a crucial match.

The league, believing this description could heap even more humiliation on children from the losing side, told the newspaper it could not cover any more junior league matches until it agreed not to publish results in which the score exceeds 14 goals...

The mother of one league player is organizing a petition against this gag order, on the sensible grounds that kids who win deserve to have mention of their accomplishments.

Couch potato

My bronchitis continues to plague me (as do the side effects of the antibiotic) and I have to travel for work this weekend, so I won't be posting much for the next few days.

I've been watching a lot DVDs lately, in part because I'm too exhausted to do anything else. We recently joined Netflix and it's superb. The deal is that you keep three (or five, if you want to pay more than $21/month) DVDs out a time, for as long as you want. If you've been plagued by late fees in the past, I'd highly recommend it. We set up a queue of 62 movies on the website; when we mail one back, Netflix logs it in the next day and mails out the next DVD in the list, which we get two days later. The queue is easy to reorder, so that you can change your mind about what you want to receive when.

Anyway, in the past two weeks I've watched Children Underground (magnificent and heartbreaking), Morvern Callar (inscrutable and kinda boring, although I liked the music), Thirteen (compelling but infuriating because I wanted to see the villian of the movie, Evie, get what she deserved, which never happened), and Donnie Darko (Huh? If anyone can explain this movie, which I enjoyed very much, please drop me an email).

With that, I'll leave you with my boyfriend's Amazon.com review of S.W.A.T, easily the worst movie we've seen in a while. Enjoy.

Even by summer action flick standards, this movie is pretty bad. Why did they even bother making this? It was so cookie-cutter generic and predictable. I kept thinking maybe they were setting us up with this paint-by-numbers plot, only to throw in some huge twist at the end, but no such luck. This was one of the few movies I've seen where I was able to predict each and every event that was going to unfold with nauseating accuracy. Even this review is generic, for cying out loud. Yes, this movie was so bland that it actually infects everything it touches and renders it disgustingly uninteresting. Case in point; I used to have a sense of humor and an active social life before the day I watched this movie. Ever since then, all I can think about are state bailment laws, APA format, Leon Uris, and fluctuating interest rate trends on home equity loans. My friends have all alienated me due to my incessant rambling about stuff nobody cares about. Even now, I ramble on. Don't you just want to shoot me? Don't let this happen to you. Stay away from this movie.

I think my boyfriend needs his own blog.

Nora learns a lesson

From DallasNews comes this review of a new children's book:

"Think globally, act locally" is a slogan that could apply to The Report Card, by Andrew Clements (Simon and Schuster, $15.95). Mr. Clements is an author and former teacher... His latest tale questions the importance of grades and standardized tests.

Nora carefully calculates ways to earn straight "D's" on her report card so she can remain with her friends. That draws a lot of attention to her, and she tries to use that attention to prove how arbitrary grades are.

Except for the fact that, you know, Nora's friends presumably aren't capable of making the A's they would need to be in her class (this is similar to the "we were able to make perfect score with test prep so that proves the tests measure nothing" argument). Nora may be smart, but not smart enough to realize that it's a whole lot easier to fake dumb than to fake smart.

When she encourages half the fifth grade to fail a standardized test, action must be taken. One of the surprising lessons she learns is that many teachers are as frustrated with standardized tests as she is.

Really? Nora must not read newspapers, which at times seem to be endless streams of teachers complaining about tests. And isn't a bit, I don't know, condescending for a smart kid to suggest deliberately failing to other kids, some of whom presumably struggled to understand the material?

The reviews on Amazon, though, suggest that the book is better than this review would indicate; for one thing, Clements doesn't pretend to have all the answers to the controversy surrounding testing in schools.

Chemical test prep

Cornell's student health center conducted a survey on alcohol and drug use. In addition to asking about the many recreational drugs that college students might be expected to use, the surveyors also inquired about the use of popular prescription stimulants to enhance classroom performance:

"Try Adderall‚ it may make a difference," states Richwood Pharmaceuticals, the company that markets and manufactures the prescription drug Adderall. This slogan reigns true for those college students that use Adderall to maintain an alert state during long periods of studying. At Cornell, students claim that not only does the drug alleviate the anxiety felt before a prelim or standardized test, but that it also helps them focus during a long day of studying at the library...

"Just ask around, someone has it [Adderall]," said one student.

Students interviewed for this article referred to it as the "study drug."

Let It Snow - Just kidding! Kidding, I say - oh, heck

It is snowing. Heavily. This is NOT an acceptable weather pattern for almost-Saint-Patrick's Day. Whoever left the snow-generating machine on overnight, please turn it OFF.

And those of you who are dieting, or who have given chocolate up for Lent, have another option for Easter goodies this year. Yummy mozzarella bunnies. Found via Tim Blair, who thought of a great headline for this story.

Managing the classroom with a wink and a smile

Is the real answer to our educational woes hiring only hotties for teaching jobs? Hey, if it would make the students buckle down more and complain less...

Via Joanne Jacobs and Michael Friedman, whose amusingly and aptly named site, Fried Man, goes into more detail about the relationship between beauty and perceived teaching skill. He even has a graph!

According to a recent NBER paper, Beauty in the Classroom: Professors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity", by Daniel S. Hamermesh and Amy M. Parker, she was also probably one of my better teachers.

Hamermesh and Parker examined the correlation between faculty members' beauty rankings and their student ratings at University of Austin. As you can see from the graph, the results were striking.

Still, my advice to ugly men considering the field of education is to get plastic surgery or to forget about teaching and go into research.

The study was done only with college professors; wonder if the same effect would appear if high school students were surveyed as well? Does beauty cause students to like professors, or do well-loved professors simply seem more attractive? (Let's have students rate their professor's looks on the first and last days of class, with separate ratings of satisfaction at the end as well, to figure out the answer to that.)

I'd love to know what six independent measures of beauty they used; probably one was a biometric rating of facial feature symmetry, or something like that. There have been plenty of books that have explored this topic; Survival of the Prettiest is one of the most entertaining (yet scientific) choices on this topic. It avoids the tired themes that we're all conditioned by the patriarchy to reward beauty and ignore the ugly by presenting research suggesting that even babies pay more attention to adult faces that have been rated as attractive.

Always Low Prices! Always whacko employees!

Hoo boy. The weather has changed and another sinus infection has me in its massive grip. This one's a doozy, not least because I have a busy workweek ahead of me. So it's 7:32 pm, and I'm going to bed.

Not before I post this, though. I thought it was hilarious, although that may be only because of the fever, chills, and Nyquil:

Daniel A. Lorenz regularly wore a collared shirt to work, but it clearly wasn't the type expected in the Wal-Mart Supercenter's dress code. He says he was fired last week upon reporting for duty in his priest's shirt with Roman collar, an Arab headdress and six crosses.

Co-workers had varying views of Lorenz, who was a cashier and then a bakery staffer before becoming an overnight stocker for $8.30 an hour. One called him "whacko"; another said he was "a great guy."

What, are those two things supposed to be mutually exclusive?

In a year at the store, Lorenz said no one complained to him about his Muslim-Christian hybrid image, which he says reflects his nondiscriminatory philosophy about world religions.

Shouldn't that be "Muslim-Christian-Vampire-Ninja" image?

"I don't believe in any one religion," Lorenz said in his EEOC complaint. "I do believe in God, but I don't attend any one church. There is no title to my religion other than a universal belief system." Lorenz's ponytail and fuzzy chin reflect his belief that hair should not be cut because he is only "borrowing" his body. He won't date or marry, because all humans are family, he said, and that would make it incest.

My guess is that his female coworkers would use even stronger negative terminology if he asked to "borrow" their bodies for an evening. And it gets better. His mother and sister are current and ex-Walmart employees. His mother converted to his "religion," and his sister is suing Wal-Mart as well for wrongful termination.

Ahhh, Vampire Ninja Muslim Christians - whole families of 'em - working at Wal-Mart. In Texas. What grist for my Nyquil-induced dreams.

And on that note, goodnight.

Malfunction Junction

I've received one email telling me that my comment section appears to be malfunctioning and "dropping" comments. If you've had that happen (and you're not Mike), please email me and let me know.

I have no idea what I can do to fix it, but since I haven't seen the problem myself, I'd like to have a better idea of how much it's been happening.

Elementary schools that teach history

Adorable columnist James Lileks is choosing schools for his adorable toddler. Lileks is a history-and-architecture buff, so his standards for choosing a preschool are rather unique:

Visited two pre-schools today, looking for New Educational Frontiers for Gnat. The first one made me slightly weak in the knees when I entered: a 1922 office building rehabbed for tots. Most of it had been gutted and done over, but the lobby had been restored to its original glory...

The building’s maintenance man drifted by, and my guide introduced us. I was looking at the rehab of the ground floor, trying to see where the original hallway had been...I pointed to a light-colored rectangle on the stone wall – tenant directory? “Nope – the mail box,” he said. Then he said the magic words. “I got it upstairs. Want to see it?”

Went back to the room where wife and child were enjoying a sample of the school’s program. “She has to go here,” I whispered. "It’s a history-drenched 1920s office building with some original fixtures!”

Hee hee hee. I remember when I first transferred to Lexington Elementary School (SC), in the 3rd grade. My mother, most definitely not an old-building nut, cried the first time she saw the place. It was a teacher's college, circa 1880, that was being used in the 1970's as a school for 1st- through 4th-graders. I don't think they renovated it, or even did any maintenance, other than to lash wire fencing across the second-story balconies so we wouldn't all plummet to the concrete below (we could still spit on people, though).

The pillars out front were massive, changing classrooms involved a dash across many buildings, and the staircase banisters were huge slabs of ornately-carved wood, where you could see the wear from many hands (and probably butts) that slid across the ends of them every day. And the bathrooms were modern - for the 1910's, I think. No stalls, few sinks, just toilets attached to the walls. Creaky, no AC, probably no central heat, etc.

I loved the place. Eventually they tore it down. The campus was so humongous that the new, large, modern elementary school they built fit entirely into what had been the bi-level playground for the old school. Lexington had to have lost a few kids out on that massive playing field each year. If you were way on the outer edge of the playground grabbing at honeysuckle plants when the warning bell rang after recess, God help you. You'd never make it back to the classroom on time.

A new kind of accountability needed in Philly

Even in a city like Philly, where political connections are paramount and it's who you know that matters, this is ridiculous:

Members of a recently formed school-safety task force have learned that the process of assigning crossing guards isn't based on any objective criteria. Instead, guards are assigned based on pressure from politicians.

"No one seems to know" how guards are assigned, Dougherty said. "I'm amazed."

Eleven million dollars to assign crossing guards, yet there are none near some Philly schools on busy streets, and more than one in areas where schools have long been closed. And a horrific number of students have been hit by cars since the beginning of the 2003-04 school year.

So far this school year, 56 public-school children across the city have been hit by cars around schools, according to school district records. Most of those accidents have occurred right outside schools. Two recent accidents injuring students outside school occurred at corners where the guard was absent, and in May 2001, a 5-year-old boy was killed at an intersection where the crossing guard was absent.

No one could explain why two crossing guards are assigned to corners near a school that has been closed for 21 years...

When no one can explain why a system works the way it does, even after children have been killed, heads should roll. I hope the Daily News repeated coverage of this problem prompts investigations and reassignments.

When kittens attack

Why I'm not blogging from home as much anymore...

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney

Kitty love

Still being distracted by the Unbearable Cuteness of Pippin. He is still trying to keep me from blogging. And like his older sister (who is pissy about his existence), he loves his view of the graveyard.

What comes between me and my computer

Hopefully I'll be back to my regular blogging schedule tomorrow. I managed to get a few posts up tonight, but I didn't have a lot of time to spend on them. This is what I have to deal with (in case you can't tell what that last one is, he's biting and tugging on the charm on my Tiffany's bracelet).

(Here's the big sister, looking mighty annoyed.)

Stimulating those linear functions

Devoted Reader Mike McKeown might run a website called Mathematically Correct, but he has a fine appreciation for the politically-incorrect teaching methods that just might get teenage boys interested in math, as evidenced by this cartoon he sent my way:

Adjusting to the new one

Off work and still spending time with the new baby (who sits on my lap when I type, and stares at the screen, and tries to leap for the keyboard...)

Pippin fascinated by my friend Jenn's hair

Pippin, bored by my lack of hair

Pippin, relaxing. Look at the size of those PAWS. He's only four months old! He's going to be HUGE!

Okay, it's really hard to type with a kitten on your lap chewing on your charm bracelet and trying to walk on the keyboards. Will blog more later.

Ow - claws - OW!

Happy Valentine's Day

I'll be taking most of this long weekend off, so I'm not sure how much bloggage will happen. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be picking up my Valentine's Day gift to myself - a five-month-old bicolored kitten named Pippin. I fell in love with him at PALS, the shelter at which I volunteer. He'll be sequestered in the room where my computer is, so I'll be in that room a lot, but I don't know if I'll be able to squeeze in any typing...

Update: This is too cute for words. Pippin is currently on my lap, purring like a fiend, and he's staring as hard as he can at the cursor moving across the screen. And he's already figured out how to use the space bar.

Blogging while he's in the room (this week) is going to be tough...more photos to come later...

He should be grateful she didn't use Elmer's Glue

Aw, c'mon - what teacher hasn't wanted to do this to a chatterbox in class?

Ben Deacy was silenced by teacher Annie Sturrock because he made too much noise, said the headteacher at the boy's school. Miss Sturrock - described by her boss as "inexperienced" - then wrote in Ben's school report: "Excellent work - once I taped up his mouth!"

He told the South Wales Echo: "What seems to have happened is an inexperienced member of teaching staff has made a grave error. "The pupil was talking a lot during the lesson and a piece of masking tape, a very small piece, was put on his lips."

Don Barnfield needs to learn what "symbolic" means. When a teacher holds her fingers to her lips to indicate that a student should be quiet, that's symbolic. When a teacher wants to tape a kid's mouth shut and then actually tapes the kid's mouth shut, it's no longer symbolic, although I doubt it's an act that would bring the weight of Social Services down on a parent.

How to gross out eighth-graders

A sign of the apocalypse - or of a failing presidential campaign:

It's a reliable sign that all is not well with a presidential campaign when the candidate finds himself grossing out eighth-graders with a spontaneous discourse on the relative merits of drinking toilet water or dog urine.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean prompted squeals of "Eeeew!" when he dropped in to teach a science class yesterday at Longfellow Middle School in La Crosse, Wis., reports The Post's John F. Harris. Though pundits have pronounced Dean's campaign in the toilet, his lecture actually had nothing to do with politics: The class has been conducting experiments on microscopic particles found in everyday fluids.

Before leaving, Dean pleaded with his pupils not to tell their parents that "Howard Dean came to my classroom and advised us to drink water from toilets."

Great headline on the article, by the way - I didn't catch that on my first reading.

Does Valentine's Day make you sick? Or is it just when you eat too many candy hearts?

From writer, father, and Bleater extraordinaire James Lileks comes this request for information:

BACKFENCE ALERT! I need your help for Thursday’s column. Subject: childhood nightmare Valentine’s Day moments. Grade school tales preferred, but not necessary. Send it to fence@startribune.com, so I can fill up Thursday’s column with tales of sweet childhood woe & forsakenness.

I'd help him out, but I really don't think I have any such tales. Seriously. I think we all had to exchange valentines in grade school, I don't remember much from middle school (because I did nothing but read comic books the entire time), and in high school I was one of those sickeningly sentimental girls who always celebrated Valentine's Day with candy and carnations and homemade cards with sweet, hand-drawn unicorn scenes on them (if I recall correctly, the recipient of that particular mush reads this blog). I think I was dating someone each Valentine's Day, too, so I'm sure I got a free meal out of it.

I can babble on about horrific dates and jealous ex-husbands with the best of 'em, but I don't have bad V-day memories. If you do, be sure to share 'em with us as well as James.

Stranded students grumpy about exams

Students who were racing on ski teams found themselves stranded the day before their exit exams. Sounds like they didn't get a good night's sleep in preparation:

Cots and wrestling mats at South Tahoe Middle School provided the bedding for roughly 90 West Slope students and teachers who were stranded when their buses broke down in a winter snow storm. The students belonged to ski teams that raced at Kirkwood Mountain Resort on Monday and found themselves without the use of two of their four buses...

"For the record, we have to take the high school exit exam today and we had three hours sleep," Jacob Fine said.

Just think of what an amusing story it will make later, Jacob.

A meeting of the minds

The First Annual Philadelphia Edubloggers Gathering (tm) took place last night at the Cosi on the UPenn campus.

Okay, well, actually, it was just Charles of Reform K12 and I meeting for coffee and soda (and much animated discussion). And we don't have any photos to show you. Still, I think this could be the starting point for some larger gatherings.

You can learn more about Charles here. Great guy, fast talker, and I bet he can do more situps than I can. Of course, that's not saying much.

You're not going outside like that, young man

Sounds like some kids are confusing "cool" with "frostbitten:"

It's a winter-morning drama playing all over town: "The Young and the Coatless."

"Colds are not caused by cold, but by viruses," she says. As for frostbite and other conditions that can arise from prolonged exposure to bitter cold, "The amount of time they're out in the cold is miniscule, usually. There is that chance the bus will break down, but that is an unusual scenario."

I have a hunch that what bothers parents most is not the relatively-unlikely scenario of hypothermia, but the idea that their teenagers are giving the ease of "accessorizing" a higher priority than staying warm or following their parents' advice.

Flashin' those cards

NOW we're talkin' math. It is from such humble beginnings that great Spades, Hearts, and Bridge players grow, and it's nice of the school to provide this service for all those deprived children who don't have card-shark Grandmas. Growing up, I seemed to be the only kid I knew whose granny didn't teach 'em to be cutthroat at Poker, or Gin Rummy, or even Go Fish.

I bet they spent the whole two hours laughing

I felt a little bit ashamed about giggling at this man last week.

Now I don't feel ashamed at all:

It took a jury little more than two hours of deliberation Friday to reject a claim from a man that the city of Escondido violated his civil rights when a cat living in a city library attacked his assistance dog more than three years ago.

"I am disappointed, I am not surprised," said Espinosa, who represented himself during the trial and appeared shaken after the verdict.

Espinosa had already reduced his demand of compensation from $1.5 mill to $15,000; not that it mattered. Best of the Web sums it up thusly:

Richard "Rik" Espinosa, the San Diego-area man who sued because a cat scratched his dog, has been awarded a big fat goose egg...Espinosa got laughed out of court. First a judge ruled that the city hadn't violated federal law, and the plaintiff "agreed to cap his potential award at $15,000"--1% of what he'd originally demanded. Then the jury rejected his case in its entirety. "He did not even receive the $335 the parties had stipulated as his damages for his vet bill ($47), one trip to the chiropractor ($48), or his lost wages ($240)," Steve Nelson, a lawyer for the city, tells us in an e-mail. The city had offered to settle for $1,000...

Although Espinosa lost the lawsuit, he still managed to impose major costs on Escondido taxpayers. "Nelson was unable to estimate how much the city spent defending itself against Espinosa's allegations, but he said it was a considerable sum," the Times reports. Then again, there's some rough justice here, for Espinosa has lost not only has lawsuit but any shred of dignity he might once have had.

The groundhog lets us down

Isn't he a beauty?

No, not really. And neither was his prediction.

And they're calling for freezing rain tomorrow. To heck with this. I'm moving to Florida.

Update: Omaha will apparently have better weather than us - but their groundhog is scarier.

Charles Murray speaks out

It's no surprise to see that the co-author of a book as controversial as The Bell Curve:Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is unafraid to speak plainly. It's also no surprise to see that Charles Murray holds statistical understanding in high regard:

BC: I'd really like to know what your opinion is of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Do you think his critique is legitimate? Don't the factors he sites all weigh on g (general intelligence) anyway?

CM: Privatize every school in the country. And if we can't do that, my second choice is to require that no one graduate from high school without having taken a solid, year- long course on statistical reasoning. Half the stupid arguments extant, whether about the environment or the 2000 presidential election or FCC regulations, are stupid primarily because people don't understand probability and statistical distributions.

I'd say that more than half of the stupid arguments about testing are because people don't understand statistical distributions (or standard errors of measurement, or validity). And I'd love to teach that high school course.

Muhammad Alley Kitty Kat

$1.5 million is at stake - over a catfight:

Jury selection is slated to begin today in a $1.5 million lawsuit a man with disabilities filed against the city of Escondido after a cat living in a city library attacked his assistance dog in 2000.

The actual damages ---- lost wages, trips to the vet and to Espinosa's doctor ---- tally up to about $325. Nelson said the city offered up two settlements, including one for $1,500, but Espinosa refused.

All I can say is, I'm gleeful at the chance to read the words, apparently said with a straight face, "The cat was a barrier to my access, and the city has circled the wagons around the cat." Espinosa claims intent and premeditation; the city supposedly knew the cat was vicious, and evil, and out to get him. Oh, and it sounds like the dog's mental state might become an issue as well, as Espinosa is alleged that everyone in Escondido has been talking about that "wuss dog that got beat up by a cat."

Must be a slow news year in Escondido. My guess is everyone's now going to be talking about the lawsuit:

Among the items that Espinosa wants the jury to see is a photograph of him with boxer Muhammad Ali. Nelson said the picture is not relevant to the case; Espinosa said the photo gives him credibility.

It also strengthens his argument, Espinosa said, since he believes the cat is like the famed pugilist: a tiger in the ring, a pussycat outside of it.

It's wrong to giggle at a disabled person, isn't it? Okay, I'll stop.

New McSnake entree is a big hit

Today's "snake tale" courtesy of Eagen, MN, and a McDonalds:

Joanne Borgerding was sitting in a packed Eagan McDonald's at lunchtime, eating a chicken sandwich and reading a book when something moved beneath her booth. Dancing in the air by her legs were "little movable eyes" that were attached to a dark, 2-foot-long snake.

Borgerding also flew out of her booth and in the process injured her foot so badly that she says she has permanent nerve damage. She asked McDonald's insurance company to pay her medical bills, but the company denied her claims, she said. Now she is seeking in excess of $50,000 in a personal injury complaint that she expects to file in Dakota County next month.

Actually, the incident happened in 2002, and Borgerding's main complaint seems to be that no McDonald's employees assisted her at the time. McDonald's also seems understandably reluctant to take responsibility for the presence of a critter that wasn't on their menu:

Kay Butler, who owns the McDonald's along with her husband, Thomas, had no comment Monday. Fred Keller, a McDonald's spokesman, said he didn't know if a snake was in the restaurant that day, but it is investigating.

"We don't feel that this (snake) could have come from our restaurant; in fact, we think it's highly unlikely. … We work hard to have a safe restaurant. We caution in drawing a conclusion," Keller said. "We just feel this could have been an unfortunate practical joke. … I know the cleanliness practice of the restaurants. I ask myself, 'How could this happen? Maybe somebody brought it in?' It could have been a fake plastic one."

A cheap shot; the local animal control is on record as saying that the animal was probably a live garter snake, although it's worth noting that the snake had been caught and released by the time animal control arrived. Borgerding wants money for her pain and suffering, and an apology. The McDonald's attitude seems to be, "Why blame us? We didn't put the snake under your booth."

*Sigh* And here I have to go purchase snakes, while people like Borgerding get them for free...

Please Don't Step on the -----

I don't get the point of this:

Zachary Tutin, a 14-year-old from north Manchester, has been made the subject of an anti-social behaviour order which prohibits him from using the word "grass", after he repeatedly abused his neighbours, claiming that they were police informers.

"If he breaches this order he can be arrested and brought to court, where he could be sent to detention."

Um, okay. What does saying "grass" have to do with his anti-social behavior? How can his speech be monitored that closely? What makes the courts believe that Tutin can't use other words to harass people? This sounds like one of those goofy parlor games where people see how long they can go without saying the word "No" while everyone tries to get everyone else to say it.

Honestly, it's hard for me to understand what the first half of the article - the anti-grass rule - has to do with the conclusion:

The youth, of Blackley, was said to have waged a two-and-a-half year campaign of terror against his local community. He picked on his neighbours, swearing at them and insulting them, carrying knives and baseball bats, and stealing and damaging their property. He used other offensive words such as "slag".

He has convictions for theft and assault and has previously served a custodial sentence. He also used racist language towards an Asian shopkeeper.

With no offense towards Asians (or slags), such language should not be made illegal; among other things, such "hate speech" laws can't be fairly enforced, and they don't impact dangerous behavior anyway. Direct threats, waving weapons around, thefts, and assaults ARE illegal and actions can be taken. I won't bore you with my pro-NRA beliefs here, but it seems sad that Tutin's neighbors have no means of protection than to hope for the boy's words to be made illegal.

But "grass"? I'm mystified. Even if, as some Fark commenters claim, "grass" is slang for "police informer," the little punk can continue to terrorize his neighbors with a whole host of other words.

High-stakes testing and high crimes

Apparently, there's a new movie out this weekend that is probably hoping to be this decade's version of The Breakfast Club. Only this time, the Force of Evil that is banding our little group of misfits together is not an insane principal, but the SAT.

Yep, our newest teen dramedy, The Perfect Score:

A group of seven high school seniors, made up of two girls (Johansson and Christensen) and five boys (Evans, Nam and three others), decide to break into the Princeton Testing Center, so they can steal the answers to their upcoming SAT tests and all get perfect scores. Each in the group has their own set of circumstances that lead them to the conclusion that the only way to truly decide their own fate is to cheat the system. The unofficial leader of the group is Kyle, an aspiring architect who dreams of attending an Ivy League school but repeatedly scores below what is required for acceptance. He develops the plan with his best friend Matty, whose low SAT scores result in a rejection letter from Maryland, the university that his girlfriend attends. Anna, who desires to meet her parents' standard of excellence but is badly in need of some excitement, joins in and brings Desmond into the fold, the star basketball player who at the urging of his mother decides to forgo the NBA for college and needs to pass the SAT to get in. Providing the access inside the local educational testing headquarters is Fransesca, an anti-establishment girl who joins in the scheme for kicks. Completing the group is Roy, a loner who wants in on the action after accidentally overhearing the plan. Although the kids seemingly share nothing in common, they join together and while getting to know each other, discover themselves in the process.

Aw, they band together through cheating! Isn't that sweet? No, not really. It's hard to believe that, maligned though testing is, the filmmakers thought teens would flock to see a movie about misfits dealing with the SAT in this fashion. Even with cheating and larceny thrown into the picture, the SAT just isn't that exciting a topic for a movie. Stand and Deliver was the first, and probably the last, exciting movie that revolved around a standardized test, and it was a genuinely moving film (although its depiction of the ETS proctors as evil men in black was as hysterical as it was incorrect).

I particularly like this part of the description: "Each in the group has their own set of circumstances that lead them to the conclusion that the only way to truly decide their own fate is to cheat the system." Moral equivalence at its best, folks. I mean, c'mon. If you're going to break the rules, kids, do it to save someone's life, or at least do it for some reason other than give yourself a break that you don't deserve. I admit I don't have a lot of respect for teens who try to protest the exams, or downplay their utility, but I have more respect for protestors than for these inane "Fight the system" cheaters.

The standard line about cheaters is, "If they put half as much effort into studying for the exams as they do into figuring out a way to beat the exam, they'd pass it." And it's true. The SAT is not like a casino, where the deck is always stacked in favor of the house, and dumb luck is the only difference between being poor and being a millionaire. That's just what testing critics want us to believe.

That much said, I'll probably have to go see it, because I've attended many an ETS workshop on catching cheaters over the years. It'll be fun to see if the screenwriters came up with a plan that the cheaters haven't. If you ever wondered what passes for psychometric small talk at cocktail parties, cheating techniques is definitely one of the more popular topics.

The faces of the future

Completely off-topic - I couldn't help but notice this stunning photo of Sabine Herold, French libertarian activist and all-around brainy beauty, on Instapundit today. Glenn also linked to a page on Dutch activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose courage and debating skills are matched only by her brilliant smile.

These two photos reminded me of a paragraph from an old essay by satirist and uber-Libertarian P.J. O'Rourke. The paragraph comes from Parliament of Whores; O'Rourke had attended a "Housing Now!" rally in which the primary cry of the attendees seemed to be, "Give us money now!" O'Rourke's friend posited an interesting theory about the relationship of feminine beauty and the cultural zeitgeist:

"Best of all, there were hardly any beautiful women at the [Housing Now!] rally. I saw a journalist friend of mine in the Mall, and he and I purused this line of inquiry as assiduously as our happy private lives allow. Practically every female at the march was a bowser. "We're not being sexist here," my friend insisted. "It's not that looks matter per se. It's just that beautiful women are always on the cutting edge of social trends. Remember how many beautiful women were in the anti-war movement twenty years ago? In the yoga classes fifteen years ago? At the discos ten years ago? On Wall Street five years ago? Where the beautiful women are is where the country is headed," said my friend. "And this," he looked around him, "isn't it."

Sabine and Ayaan are, I hope, the future of France and Holland. Contrast their intelligence and courage in dealing with difficult realities with the boneheaded approach of these ladies, who seem to believe that peeling off their clothes is all it takes to free the victims of oppression worldwide. Don't miss the comments.

I left my heart in Ms. Smith's biology class

And speaking of overly-restrictive school policies, school board members in Fox Chapel, PA, may soon be scrambling to create one.

Then again, perhaps, "No cadavers or body parts can be brought to Show And Tell" isn't too limiting:

A parent brought the arm of a human cadaver to school Tuesday in Fox Chapel, then opened it up during a discussion about surgery. A fifth-grader fainted.

He's done similar lectures at the school with eyes, ears and a brain. And no one's ever complained before.

Perhaps because they were all out cold?

Remarkably, he had nothing to declare

Here's one way to avoid those long lines at the security checkpoints in airports.

Love the little detail about him being cornered near a beignet shop. Perhaps police were able to grab him at that point because he was covered in confectioner's sugar?

The Cookie Brigade is coming for you

For those of you whose New Year's Resolutions were to lose weight and eat heathier food - meet your enemies:

Cookie season is only a few weeks away and some Girl Scouts are being trained not to take no for an answer this year.

And they covered the easy ones, too, such as those who say they don't have enough money.

If you're near Minneapolis, watch out for Public Offender #1:

The top seller for the Minneapolis Girl Scout Council last year sold 2,050 boxes. That's more than $6,000 worth of cookies. The seller, identified only as Danielle, still found time to encourage others.

"She wrote a letter to the other girls to not give up hope," said Rosi Hewitt of Coon Rapids, whose daughter is a Girl Scout.

2,050 boxes...let's see. There are between 14 and 40 cookies per box, depending on the cookie type, meaning Danielle alone unleashed anywhere from 28,700 to 82,000 cookies on an already-struggling-with-their-weight public. At 40 to 75 calories per cookie, that's 82,000 to 153,750 calories, or between 23 and 44 extra pounds. Eeek.

If any of you Minneapolis residents see Danielle headed your way, run. Your thighs will thank you for it later (and besides, they need the exercise).

7-year-old disovers infallible method of winning stuffed toys

One enterprising kid becomes entertainment under glass at a Piggly Wiggly in Sheboygan, WI:

A 7-year-old boy had to be rescued with the help of a locksmith Saturday after crawling into a supermarket's stuffed animal game machine while his father talked on the telephone.

He said the boy, whose name was not released because he is a minor, crawled through about an 8-inch-by-10-inch opening to get into the glass enclosure via a chute where the toys come out, but when he tried to get back out his way was blocked.

The picture is amusing. I figure the kid has a cracking good chance at a career as a cat burglar, if he can crawl through such a tiny space unnoticed (these games are usually at the very front of Piggly Wigglys, by the cash registers).

Auld Lazy Syne

The boyfriend and I have absolutely nothing special planned for tonight, other than some homemade chicken burritos, a glass of champagne (a Christmas gift from a co-worker), and a perusal of what's on cable. I used to do New Year's Eve up huge; that was before I spent lots of money on Christmas gifts, entertainment, and travel. Now all it takes is a glance at my checkbook (as it lies in my purse still whimpering and battered from my shopping sprees), and suddenly staying in becomes much more attractive than spending any cash to go out.

Knowing me, I'll spend a lot of time online:

In Port Clinton, Ohio, they drop a 600-pound fiberglass fish at midnight. Webcam available for those of you who won't be there.

Fark reports: "Coward Congressman urges people to avoid Times Square. Mayor Bloomberg says grow a pair."

From the I-don't-know-how-easy-I-have-it department: Some Britons are staying in tonight too, thanks to jacked-up club prices. If I read this correctly, it's over 140 pounds, or around 280 dollars, to go out on New Year's Eve in England. Good grief. And here I am staying home because I don't feel like paying 10 dollars for parking or 35 for entry to a club.

CNN has a roundup of New Year's Eve on the Net.

James Lileks has a great discussion of the symbolism of New Year's Eve (i.e., there isn't any) and discusses his favorite New Year's Eve:

I will say this – probably said it last year, and the year before, too - he New Year’s Eve I’ll always remember is Dec. 31, 2001, when Times Square was packed with about 326 million people who screamed “yeah well Al Qaeda THIS, yo” and Rudy swore in Nurse Bloomberg before the cheering crowds. I watched that moment through the back door window – I’d gone outside for the first cigar of 02, and the neighbors were setting off fireworks. I felt better at that moment than I’d felt since September 10.

Update: Oh, my. If you're anywhere near Brasstown, NC, don't miss the Possum Drop. Yeah, it's a real possum they lower in a cage (these critters exist in huge whomping numbers in that state; I used to help my roommate rehabilitate orphan possoms who ended up at her shelter).

Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, at the exact same moment that hundreds of thousands of people holler in the New Year at Times Square in New York, and millions more tip back champagne flutes and watch it on television, a few hundred people will huddle together at a Citgo station in this little town in Appalachia, wearing hunting jackets and those hats with the dangly ear straps, cheering the descent of one confused marsupial.

And then, as the crowd starts going bananas, "The possum has landed!" The possum is alive, of course, and will be released at the end of the night unharmed, though a little shaken.

Oh, man. A "Miss Possum" contest, a "cross-dressing affair in which bearded truck drivers wear eye shadow and strut across stage with hands like oven mitts swinging at the sides of bursting lace dresses"? If I was anywhere near, I'd be there.

Legendary talk show host likes No 2 Pencil

Fellow blogger, talk show host, and silver-tongued flattered Milt Rosenberg sent me a link to his blog with some nice compliments about mine. I'll be happy to add him to my blogroll - once he adds me to his, of course (heh.) I rarely listen to talk radio (I rarely listen to the radio at all), so I confess I was unfamiliar with Milt's show before now.

Discover Milt's File here.

Radio 720 WGN in Chicago, which hosts his show (do I have any Chicago readers out there?)

Radio 720's page about his show.

Here's his bio - he's a professor of Psychology at Chicago and got his Ph.D. from Michigan, which means he probably knows some of my former professors and advisors.

I particularly like the description of him as "lone, bespectacled and slightly superannuated professor."

Attention Blue Light Shoppers - Spelling homework due on Aisle 5

Old Kmarts become new schools in Florida (not California - thanks, Mike!):

As architects finish prototype designs for all future school construction, the Lee County School District is experimenting with two vacant commercial structures that will be converted into school buildings.

"Although they might not look alike on the curbside, the inside will be the same," Superintendent James Browder said. "A classroom is a classroom, no matter if we mold it into a large building."

Think of everything that's already in place - adequate parking, security systems, that great big ICEE machine and hot dog heater you see in every store...Why do any remodeling? Throw up some moveable dividing walls and the kids would be happy to attend the Kmart as is.

The tale of Osama Fin Laden

Lara Hayhurst, a college student in New York, was appropriately outraged at the treatment she and her fish received from airport security over the holidays. She takes it out on the hapless screeners and cold-hearted supervisors in this delightful essay:

[After being stopped by screeners] I was led back to the US Airways ticket counter, stocking-footed and alone, where the agents reasserted that they did not see a problem for me to have a fish on board, properly packaged in plastic fish bag and secured with a rubber band as MJ was. But the TSA supervisor was called over, and he berated me profusely. He exclaimed that in no way, under no circumstances, was a small fish allowed to pass through security, regardless of what the ticket agents said.

By this time, I was in tears. The supervisor furiously told me to dispose of the fish. Dispose of my fish?! What did he want me to do, throw him away?

Instead, she and her boyfriend became savvy fish-smugglers, complete with a distracting and effective emotional assualt on the airport employees:

We took a deep breath and proceeded [with the fish tucked into her backpack]. We loaded our things onto the belt before the X-ray machine and walked through. Once past the scanner, Trey and I grabbed our things and ran for the gates, eager to find the first bathroom to see if MJ was intact. On the way, we passed by the original security checkpoint we had tried to go through.

We turned and walked away. I smelled an Oscar.

The fish survived intact, but Lara's respect for the new airport security measures did not:

As I write this I sit with a cat in my lap and my fish, which I have aptly renamed X-ray, swimming contentedly in his glass-beaded bowl. And even though my actions may send Tom Ridge reeling and upset the karma of the Department of Homeland Security, I really don't care.

Honestly, they have bigger fish to fry.

Revenge of the Valedictorian

Who Tends the Fires has commentary on the amazing story of Andrew Ironside, a geek who was elected valedictorian as a joke - and got the last laugh:

Mr. Ironside, who had his own page in the yearbook, had been elected valedictorian in a vote carefully orchestrated by his peers and designed to embarrass him.

"It was a joke," confirmed teacher Heddy Wright, "nobody thought he would go through with it."

Wow, Ms. Wright, it's great to see you used your position of authority to stand by and watch your students make a unpopular kid valedictorian as a joke. Well, it doesn't matter if Ms. Wright ever got around to teaching her students lessons on compassion and understanding for others; Andrew got the last laugh:

"I'm pretty happy to say I've spent time with almost all of you," said the good-looking blond who introduced Mr. Ironside at the graduation ceremony. "Sadly to say, Andrew is not really included in this group of people. The truth is, I really barely know him."

He concluded his speech by telling his classmates he would "probably never see any of you again," and saw rows of steely-eyed parents behind his laughing classmates. "I knew some people wouldn't like it," he said. "I was kind of a nerd type. Nothing I could say would convince them I should be up there."

Bravo. If nothing else, that'll teach the jokesters that it's not very bright to put geeks on the spot, especially the spot directly in front of a microphone.

Who Tends the Fires was particularly scornful of the principal's naive response:

-----
Mr. Adams, who had been principal of the school since 1999, said Mr. Ironside's speech prompted much "reflection and soul searching" in the school and the community...

High School is hell, folks, especially for the nerds and geeks, of which I fell smack-dab into said category. We're not out to score the winning goal nor do we think sports are everything, we actually enjoy learning, and we normally learn at our own pace and on our own time. This usually makes us unpopular among the jocks-and-cheerleaders set, and can make us a thorn in the sides of the teachers as well. We're not only square pegs, we're square pegs from the Planet Freedlzorp compared to the usual group of misfits. Sometimes, during the tougher phases of High School, we wonder if we were even meant to exist on Earth; that maybe there was a routing glitch in the Ethereal System that dropped our souls in the wrong proverbial Inbox. Getting through a single day in school was sometimes a hellish battle for scraps of dignity, and there were more than a few times when I wondered if I'd ever survive the day with my spirit intact...

Obviously Andrew managed to do so. He's now a biochem major at college; may his braininess and studiousness be rewarded.

When toddlers fall, moms sue

From Fark.com to the Jewish World Review, there's been a wide round of appalled reaction to this money-hungry mom and her lawsuit against Stamford, CT, and their "unsafe" parks:

A 2-year-old model and actor who cut his head at a playground is seeking unspecified lost wages and other compensation from the city.

Mader blamed the boy's injury on a green railing, which she said blends in with the landscaping. Mader said the railing should be painted a brighter color. "This accident was preventable had the railings and safety measures been correct at this park, " Mader wrote in her claim.

JWR columnist Mitch Albom wonders where childhood has gone:

What I am sure of is this: I feel older every year. I read a story like that...and what I mainly take away from it is not that parents will sue over anything these days, but that the 2-year-old has a career! A career that a playground could interrupt!

Anyhow, the doctor said don't worry, I would start talking eventually, which I did. My mother did not seek damages for my silence. She did not look at everyday life as depriving me of a paycheck. But back then, we had this strange concept. It was called "childhood." It was not to be raced through. It was not in the way of a career.

Fark, which is becoming the center of information for the entire planet, has a photo in the comments section of the not-bright-enough green railings. Apparently Stamford has neon-green shrubbery, along with toddler models and parents who sue the city after failing to keep an eye on their own child.

My favorite Fark comments on the topic?

I'm taking up a collection for a countersuit. If we can't get enough money for a lawyer, we'll just buy a helmet for her son. If we can't get enough money for a helmet, we'll just buy a sign for her that says, "Your son is a retard. We can see where he gets it."

SHE deliberately placed that child in jeopardy by letting him play on OBVIOUSLY DANGEROUS equipment. Such a person should never again be permitted to endanger a child.

Hee hee hee.

P.S. - Where are overprotective moms in parks when you need them? This British mum is appalled that her 11-year-old son spent six hours in jail after being arrested while trying to build a treehouse in a public park. Mum, where were you when the kid was out in the rain with two hacksaws and a claw hammer, helping another kid try to cut down a mature tree?

And don't give us that "it was half-dead, anyway," routine, Mumsie.

Merry Christmas News

Between my poor departed python and the general holiday hangover/sinus infection that I always seem to have this time of year, I needed some cheering up. Luckily, recent news and blog postings provide it:

Soldier returns home from Iraq, tells local reporter that he can't wait to have a Genny Cream Ale. The High Falls Brewing Company promptly pulls up to his house with a truck full; one Cream Ale for every day the soldier served in Iraq.

A VP of a foodbank in Virginia sent a letter to a meat packing company, asking if they could donate any meat to help needy families celebrate Christmas. Smithfield Packing Co responded with an 18-wheeler full of 10,000 pounds of free meat.

James Lileks is back! He reports on his toddler's Christmas recital:

Her preschool celebrates Christmas with untrammeled gusto, I’m happy to say. You got your manger, your big multi-pointy star, your kings on camels, your myrhh. The three- and four-year olds had an afternoon service last week, and it pegged the Cute-O-Meter – they filed into the great vaulted sanctuary singing “Jesus Loves Me” in that classic toneless toddler caterwaul that nevertheless finds a melody somewhere, and holds it aloft like the body of some strange & lovely creature that washed up on the village’s shore.

They sang five songs, including Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Same repertoire I sang when I was in the Elim Lutheran Cherub Choir back in Fargo in the early 60s...We had a choir director intent on unlearning our juvenile inflections. It drove him nuts when we hissed that wish: We WISSSSH you a Merachrismus we WISSSSH you a Merachrismus we WISSSSH you a Merachrismus anda HABBYNUYEER. Now I teach Gnat to lean on the Wish. Put your elbow into it, kid.

A 20-year-old National Guardsman, unmarried and with no kids, gave up his chance to come home for Christmas so that a fellow guardsman could see his family:

When the Cape May Court House-based 253rd Transportation Company held a drawing to determine who would get leave, Specialist Jonathan Hinker -- the married father of a 7-year-old son -- drew too high a number to qualify. However, the 34-year-old Lower Township man's disappointment soon turned to joy when Specialist James Presnall volunteered to stay in Iraq.

Presnall, a 20-year-old Galloway Township native who is not married, had planned to spend his leave with his parents, Howard and Toni Presnall. While disappointed about not seeing their son, they were overjoyed to learn of their son's selfless act.

A chance to help Iraqi youth; donate money to buy musical instruments through Spirit of America:

U.S. Army Civil Affairs Captain Justin Thomas emailed Spirit of America requesting musical instruments for the people of Khormal, Iraq who had suffered years of repression under radical Islamists.

Justin wrote, "I believe that one necessity is musical instruments. I know this sounds trivial, but the towns around Halabja and Khormal are known throughout Kurdistan for their cultural history, to include musicianship and traditional Kurdish music. However, when Ansar al Islam and other Islamist organizations took power, they forbad any type of music playing or listening, to include Kurdish folk music. Music was outlawed until the people were liberated at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. There are children who are only now hearing their traditional music, and adults who very much want to celebrate their traditions."

2003 Weblog Award winners!

The 2003 Weblog Awards winners have been announced! Considering that Edublogger Supreme Joanne Jacobs snagged the bronze, it's not surprising that Number 2 Pencil came in further down the list (#11, to be exact). But hey, I'm tickled pink just to be on there, and thanks to all of you who voted for me.

And now, a Public Service Announcement

Ways to give this holiday season:

Chief Wiggles is still gathering toys for Iraqi children. Go to Operation Give to send your own gift, donate money, or buy from one of OG's sponsors. Click here to read more about his mission; you can also view an MSNBC interview with the Chief, who is a Utah National Guard member currently serving in Iraq, from the OG main website. FedEx is offering free shipping for the toys as well.

GearThatGives.com - an entire shopping mall for gifts that benefit, among other causes, the Animal Rescue Site (click here to click through with a free donation) and the Breast Cancer store.

Got no money or time, but got some extra frequent flyer miles? Donate 'em to a serviceman or servicewoman so they can fly home for Christmas. Read more about it in USA Today. Our military members serving overseas can get a free trip back to Baltimore, Dallas or Atlanta, but then have to pay their own way back to their own city within the country. Your extra frequent flyer miles can help.

Novica.com is where I bought most of my Christmas gifts this year. The gifts are handmade in countries around the world, and the marketplace is sponsored in part by National Geographic. I can personally vouch for the beauty of the products and the charming personal notes from the artists that come enclosed with each piece. You can also bid on Novica's stuff via eBay.

And don't forget, voting for the 2003 Weblog awards ends this Sunday. Use the button on the right-hand menu to leave a vote for me as your favorite female blogger!

Better writing through crime solving

Indianapolis second-graders are patiently writing various crime-solving scenarios in an effort to discover who kidnapped their gingerbread men:

Second grade teacher Katie Lewandowski made the missing men. "I came in in the morning and was getting ready to unlock my door and saw they were gone. Hanging on my mailbox was a ransom note."

"He's one clever reindeer and he can just fly away."

The article's conclusion gives away the benevolent intent of the "crime":

Our source, who knows the kidnapper, expects the mystery will be solved late next week.

Rugrats does testing

Devoted Reader Captain Yips sends along this amusing review of the episode of Rugrats: All Grown Up that aired last night:

You might get a laugh out of the strange episode on the "Rugrats:All Grown Up" episode we saw last night [title = "Thief Encounters"]. One of the rugrats - Chuckie, I think, now a fifth grader - becomes so tense about taking a 5th-grade achievement test that he starts sleepwalking and "stealing" stuff his neighbors have left on their lawns. When the class finishes the test, the teacher says pityingly, "counsellors are waiting outside." The cops who caught Chuckie let him go out of sympathetic memory of their tests years ago.

Awww. Testing as a means of bonding between a young boy and a police authority figure. What could be cuter?

And by the way, I believe this misadventure is the only hard evidence to corroborate Time's theory that testing pressures cause antisocial behavior in younger children. We can call it, "The Chuckie Factor."

The next Verizon Wireless ad

This has nothing to do with testing, but I love this story so much, I had to post it:

In less time than it took a North Brunswick patrolman to write a ticket for an unregistered vehicle, the driver got his car registered online Thursday.

Leach's ingenuity did not save him from getting a ticket, but it did keep him from having his car towed and getting socked with the towing bill.

After pulling Zier over, the officer mentioned that renewals could be done online. So Zier called a friend, gave him an access code and a credit card number, and had the friend renew the registration. Which took place immediately.

Hee hee hee. I hope Zier fights the ticket in court.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

What a week.

In the last seven working days, I've worked almost 70 hours - very productive hours, luckily. Data have been collected. Subjects have been trained, monitored, and debriefed. Technology has been wrestled with. Office politics have been tangled with. Summaries, memos, research reports, and presentations have been written. Outrageous inter-office misunderstandings have taken place, with flurries of apologetic emails falling afterwards like the snow I'm hoping we get tonight.

I'm pooped. I haven't been home except to sleep. My cat has forgotten who I am. I think I might have blogged this week, but damned if I remember doing so.

Therefore, my butt is staying right here in this house tomorrow, whether it snows or not. The most challenging task I plan to do is decide where I want to put the Christmas/Yule decorations.

Oh, but I'll be blogging, too. I want to do it, and my Devoted Readers deserve it. You guys have been faithfully checking my site this week, hoping I would write something insightful or interesting (I bet I failed on both counts). I even got two trolls commenting on an old post. One lumped us all together as "you people" who don't have a sense of humor ("you people"? Parents? People interested in education? People who think for themselves? Wonder what he could mean?). The other unhappy poster suggested seriously (I think) that Marxism could fix our educational system.

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. See you all tomorrow.

The wonders of nicotine

Well, this is one of the more interesting scientific research results I've read lately: Nicotine patches can help improve focus and response times on standardized tests. Not that this will necessarily help any ambitious, Harvard-bound youngsters out there, though; the research has been done only on elderly folks who suffer from mild "age-associated memory impairment."

Previous research conducted by the Duke team and others has found evidence that nicotine might benefit people with a variety of disorders -- including schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and Alzheimer's disease. However, the latest study is the first to examine the drug's effects on people with age-associated memory impairment (AAMI), a common condition among older people characterized by so-called "senior moments."

"In folks with relatively minor changes in their memory and thinking, there was some improvement with nicotine skin patches in the areas of attention and their general perception of their own memory," said Duke geriatrician Heidi White, M.D. "We hope that will translate into treatments that allow people to actually function better in their daily lives."

Back in the saddle

I'm back, full of turkey and stuffing and gravy and hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and I'm completely reinvigorated. I'm ready to work off some of this food. I'm ready to get cracking on the blog, my job, my Christmas shopping, my Christmas cards, house cleaning, you name it. God help anyone who gets in my way at Target this weekend.

I hope your holiday time was good for you and those you love, too.

You can take it with you....

...All your parents' appliances, to college, that is:

As students take more appliances and gadgets to school, colleges are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade electrical systems. The costs are often recouped by increasing room rates...

Andrew Matthews, of the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International, said many dorms were built in the 1950s and 1960s and don't have the electrical capacity for power-dependent students.

I'm still angry (and sweaty) about the fact that, as late as 1986, there were un-airconditioned dorms at the University of (Sweltering, Humid, Sticky) South Carolina. And yep, I was in one of 'em. In case you were ever wondering what could be worse than a hangover, that would be a hangover when you're stuck in a shoebox of an "historic" dorm room with no AC when it's 105 degrees outside with the humidity index. Bleargh.

(Via the Cranky Professor.)

Frosty the Snowperson of An Indistinguishable Gender

Those of you who are parents will appreciate this (if you live in Skokie, IL, you'll really appreciate it). Michele of A Small Victory puts out the word that she's running a contest to see who can best envision a politically-correct holiday season. Right now, commenters are competing to see who can best mangle lyrics to holiday songs (though she apparently did that contest last year).

I kinda like this one:

You don't need to watch out
You can cry all the time
Keep a permanent pout
I'm tellin' you why

Santa Claus is a performance-neutral giver.

And I love how this segment from "Walking Through A Winter Wonderland" is modified for the feminists in the audience:

In the meadow we can build a snowperson,
Then pretend that he or she is a member of the clergy from the religion of your choice or, if you prefer, a justice of the peace.

He or she'll say: Are you married?
We'll say: No person,
Because marriage is a paternalistic construct
Designed to suppress women

Someone just jumped in in the comments to say that his tax dollars shouldn't have to support any religious expression in schools, so I expect the thread to take a more combative tone.

Should professors lower grades for poor attendance?

A defiant student wants to know why some college professors take points off for low attendance:

...my refusal to attend class does not excuse policies that subvert the value of learning and education, emphasizing attendance instead.

When evaluating superior standardized test scores, such as what one might make on the SAT and ACT, admissions officers don’t ask whether students attended prep courses before the exam. Obviously, a high score denotes that a test taker knows the material.

The writer, one Chris Piper of UT-Arlington, then answers his own question:

I truly believe most professors want their students to score well, which is why they implement attendance policies. I am touched by the sentiment. But if missing class leads to poor results by traditional grading methods — tests, quizzes, projects, etc. — then so be it. The student body could use some winnowing out.

I think this is exactly why most professors ask that students come to class. Even the ones who should be "winnowed out" have, like Chris, paid tuition, and so I imagine most professors want to emphasize that their scholarly material will be inadequately understood by those students who skip lectures. So they tell the students, if you want your money's worth, come to class, and then they back it up with attendance policies, pop quizzes, and so on.

Given that pop quizzes would penalize an absent student as much as an attendance policy would, it's hard to see why Chris supports that method, unless he is convinced that his professors don't work hard enough. I give lots of pop quizzes in my statistics courses because they do provide useful feedback, and because I don't take points off for poor attendance. But then, I don't have to; anyone who skips a lot of stats lectures is most likely not going to do well, pop quizzes aside.

Teachers and students, behaving badly

Let's see, in the "I-can-behave-outrageously-and-still-keep-my-paycheck" category, we now have, in addition to Goose Creek Principal McCrakin and FDR High Assistant Principal Knoll, North Carolina science teacher Jeff Ferguson, who decided to demonstrate the body's ability to neutralize acids in milk by making his students drink it until they vomited. Sure, participation was voluntary, and only five of the 42 students actually threw up, but still. Joanne Jacobs calls it "an educational experience for all, especially for the teacher, who's been suspended." With pay, I might add.

Of course, students aren't always angels themselves. In New Zealand, one enterprising female bully set up a website that invited and encouraged other students to leave nasty messages about another girl at her school. Allegedly the result of a "schoolyard spat," the website quickly became evidence of some very ugly behavior:

[A newspaper] said the website's home page contained "foul comments" about the victim, and included a guest book filled with similar comments from fellow students as well as threats to "bomb" her computer with viruses.

She said while it was becoming increasingly common for children to abuse each other through mobile texting and email, she had not previously heard of someone devoting a website to such attacks and encouraging others to join in. "I think it's the nastiest kind of thing that you could throw at somebody," she said. "I would call it at the very high end of bullying."

There's yet another entry in the "If-I-fake-a-hate-crime, I-help-validate-real-crimes!" category as well. A Northwestern University student has been charged with felony disorderly conduct after it was determined that he faked racist graffiti and a knife attack (free subscrip required):

Jaime Alexander "Xander" Saide, 19, told his story to hundreds of Northwestern students at a campus rally against discrimination...Saide had told police that on Nov. 4 he found anti-Hispanic slurs including the word "die" written on a wall and a poster near his room in Chapin Residential College. On Nov. 8, he told police, a man grabbed him from behind and put a knife to his throat as he walked to his dormitory after visiting friends. He said the man whispered an anti-Hispanic epithet in his ear before running off...

Alexander Rabbit Magalli, 18, a freshman, said Saide had good intentions, "but it was the wrong way to go about it. ... I hope this doesn't hurt the cause."

Unfortunately for Magalli, every such incident does hurt the cause. The more fake racial crimes that occur, the more willing people will be to dismiss or suspect the real ones.

And then there's this unnamed 15-year-old in North Carolina who, to let his therapist tell it, has just been exploring his fantasies, and is "merely a big talker, with a low chance of hurting himself or others." (Free subscrip required to access the story.) Nevertheless, he's been in juvenile detention since October 22nd, and has just been released to his parent's custody (under what is essentially house arrest). He's also banned from going to his school - indeed, from approaching any school.

Another victim of a draconian zero-tolerance policy? Well, perhaps not:

Last month police said they uncovered a plot to explode homemade napalm at Concord High and on school buses while they were investigating an unrelated and unfounded bomb threat.

Police also said they found what the boy had labeled a "corpse list" naming more than 20 people, including himself, whom police say the boy intended to hurt.

The psychologist saw no problem with this:

"Kids who don't have a lot of confidence sometimes become interested in fringe subjects: war paraphernalia, explosives," Sultan responded. "In a 30-year-old it would strike me as unusual, but not at his age."

What about the "corpse list" and notes about where to plant the bombs at school? Is that also not unusual for a 15-year-old?

Silly me

Earlier today, I posted about an anti-voucher article that I mistakenly/carelessly/idiotically thought was recent. Turns out that though I disagreed with most of it, the article must have been effective; Prop 38 in California, which would have provided vouchers for private school tuition, was roundly defeated. In 2000. Thanks to the reader who so tactfully pointed this out to me.

I was going to keep up some of my posting, but realized that since I was using post-2000 sources to make some of my points, it was a lost cause, so I removed the entire thing. That's what I get for getting so caught up in the moment that I miss an important point (i.e., that I was beating a dead horse). I don't often post about vouchers, so I should have done my research more thoroughly.

Fill in the bubbles about your beloved

You know, I never knew there was even one popular marriage suitability inventory out there, let alone three of them. As Slate reports, one of the inventories, FOCCUS, has become so popular within the Catholic Church that it is used in two-thirds of dioceses these days:

It might seem strange that the church, which historically encouraged couples to marry to prevent premarital sex, now urges them to take a critical look at their prospective union. Based on answers from the quiz, some priests and lay counselors actively discourage some couples from marrying. Yet FOCCUS is not a religious tool; its questions are stripped of any judgment, and its facilitators are instructed not to use it as a forum to preach or punish...

Despite its sometimes provocative content, the quiz itself looks like any standardized test. Using a No. 2 pencil, each respondent scribbles in a bubble marked "Agree," "Disagree," or "Uncertain" for 156 questions that fall under 19 categories. These include financial issues, sexuality issues, and lifestyle expectations. The results, scored by computer, show the couple's percentage of coinciding attitudes. Taken six months or more before the wedding date, FOCCUS prompts anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of its respondents to postpone or even scrap their weddings.

You can see 10 sample items here. These items alone would be grist for a heavy discussion mill between almost any two betrothed people, I bet. Some of these topics - kids, religion, in-laws - are definitely "dealbreakers." And despite the concerns of some priests that FOCCUS is prejudiced by the current popular culture, there is some evidence to suggest that the inventory has predictive validity (the most important kind for this sort of judgment-making):

The quiz's predictions appear to be accurate: According to a 1995 study (by an independent research group at Purdue University), FOCCUS was 80 percent correct at predicting couples' satisfaction by their five-year anniversary. In fact, it has proven so successful at launching happy marriages—and thwarting train wrecks—that it has been adopted by more than two-thirds of the nation's dioceses. What's more, it's now taken by more non-Catholics than Catholics. Of the three major pre-marriage questionnaires, FOCCUS is the most widely used, offered by more than 500 Protestant churches as well as non-Christian and secular counselors...

For the most part, however, Catholic and secular counselors call FOCCUS a breakthrough. At Rutgers University's National Marriage Project, a secular policy think tank, director David Popenoe praises couples inventories in general for preventing bad marriages and for getting couples accustomed to soliciting outside help...

Alternative schooling

Recently, I received an email from a reader who declined to comment on any of my specific posts, but wondered why I thought that public schools had improved with the recent advent of standardized tests. It was this reader's opinion that the testing had, if anything, made schools worse, because teachers were "teaching to the test" at the expense of real education, which to this reader meant critical thinking, independent thinking, and problem solving among other things. This reader also thought that many schools currently force kids to learn in time with the slowest of the group, so that the brightest kids were bored or unfulfilled.

For starters, I certainly hope that I never gave the impression on here that I think testing in and of itself will improve teaching, or fix a bad school. Testing is only a measurement gauge, neither inherently bad nor good. Right now, most tests used in K-12 schools do measure very basic and objective skills, but tests need not by definition be that narrow. Certainly, tests can measure problem-solving abilities and independent thinking (and "teaching to the test" is not a bad thing if it's a good test.)

I do think testing is one of the necessary components to fixing a bad school, though, and I think there are many more bad public schools today than people realize. Testing certainly can be used in the wrong way, and if schools just test more often without modifying teaching or curricula in order to improve education, then teachers and students will just get frustrated. But tests used well can indeed help bring all students up to better performance, and there's some evidence now that previously-failing schools have improved.

I'm not surprised to find that some of my readers dislike the tests because they believe their kids are bored by them, or because they believe the teaching is now dumbed down in order to help the slower kids on the tests. In some places, I'm sure this is the case. This frustration has arisen because the current political climate mandates that schools focus on their worst performers, and that schools be graded according to how all their students do, rather than how the best students do. Does this mean that some schools have been forced to neglect the brighter students in favor of the slower ones? I'm sure it has.

My correspondent then pointed me towards a website for the Cedarwood Sudsbury School. The website makes the place sound like heaven, and for some kids, I'm sure it is. This school for 5-to-18-year-olds is all about "self-initiated learning" in a "democratic environment" that is "diverse." Their educational program focuses on self-knowledge, communication, social, and entrepreneurial skills, and creativity. Do they focus on the basics, the core curriculum? On literacy and elementary mathematics, yes; the rest is dismissed as not essential to a successful life, "an almost random selection from a large universe of useful and interesting information." This school makes it clear that they do not believe that pushing kids to learn algebra or history will actually help kids succeed in life.

For some kids, though, this kind of school would be hell. Some kids flourish in schools that focus on discipline, facts, structured learning, and lots of testing. Some kids are never going to be exposed even to basic literacy at home, and a school that can cram as much knowledge into them as possible is what is going to help those kids succeed in life. The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, also called "no-excuses" schools, are one example. These schools are all about goal, leadership, discipline, rigorous learning schedules - and testing, testing, testing. The students at these schools are the demographic that too many "educators" have given up on, or are too hasty to make excuses for. The kids at KIPP schools give lie to the declaration that test scores measure only SES.

Maybe the problem with many public schools now is that they're trying to be both creative and demanding, both "self-initiated" and on task. They have no choice - they don't want all their bright kids to leave for better schools, but they are forced by law to bring the slower kids up to speed. Public schools are now trying to be all things for all kids, and I don't think they're doing too well.

Some kids would do great in that Cedarwood School, because they're bright kids with lots of motivation who feel trapped in public school. But some kids would do nothing in Cedarwood except goof off, fall behind, and feel frustrated because there's no one showing them exactly what to do. Some kids need that, some don't, and it's not necessarily related to intelligence. I know that I've always done better in structured learning environments than in open ones.

If nothing else, my reader's email strengthens my belief that school choice, charter schools, and the ability of parents to send their kids to schools that are targeted to their childrens' needs are essential for the future. The era of the one-room school house has been long-gone; the days of one public school for all may be coming to an end as well.

By the way....

I had a great Halloween - got dressed up, gave away a ton of candy, had seven close friends over for a little party.

Some folks didn't have as good a time. This guy, for example, decided to visit the tourist trap known as Salem (MA) on Halloween and got stabbed for his troubles. And then there's this fool, who vandalized a woman's house after his trick-or-treating son allegedly failed to recieve candy from her. Um, Pops, it's the kids who are supposed to "trick" when they don't get "treated."

Finally, this saucy student decided to go to school dressed as "Safe Sex." The Osceola High (FL) administrators took umbrage at her condom-covered t-shirt, and the fact that said condoms were being distributed to other students, and suspended offending student Lanessa Riobe for three days.

This is my favorite part of the article:

To Lanessa Riobe, who said she's never been in trouble at school before, wearing a T-shirt that advocates safe sex is no different from wearing one that says "I love Jesus" or "I love Satan."

Is she implying that students at her high school have been spotted with both of these t-shirts on? And does she not understand that a t-shirt which says "Practice safe sex" is a wee bit different from a t-shirt that is essentially a free condom vending machine?

Happy Halloween!

No real bloggage today; I'm leaving early to participate in our company's food drive, and then I need to get the rest of the party food for the gathering I'm having tonight. So, I'll leave you with a few spooky links, and wish you all a lot of fun and candy tonight!

What your Halloween costume says about you - Use this information to psychoanalyze that weird coworker of yours who came to the office dressed as a dominatrix nun.

Top Ten Scary Geek Movies, parts one, two and three. My favorite? "28 Releases Later."

The 100 Scariest Movie Scenes of All Time, from the fabulous RetroCrush site.

A how-to on how to remove eggs and toilet paper from your house, just in case you live near a bunch of juvenile delinquents.

Download that creepy-ass theme from Halloween here and play it really loud on your computer, the better to scare your cubicle-mates. The Divimax 25th Anniversary Edition of that 1978 classic is available for as low as $18.49 on Amazon.

Read about horror movies gone horribly wrong; Jabootu's got the reviews of such putrid horror movie failures as From Hell It Came(1957)The Creeping Terror(1964), Rock & Roll Nightmare, and, one of the worst movies of all time, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

That's all for now. I'll be back on Monday!

Update:Okay, I said I wasn't going to blog, but I have to link to this humorous story about a NC State fan who admits to a terrible secret in his past - rooting for UVA:

Imagine the horror: sports fans wearing striped ties, spectators swaying hand-in-hand in song, and constant and repeated references to Thomas Jefferson in every uttered phrase. Make no mistake, this horror is as real as the grave of Sally Hemmings. I should know, I lived it. This is my story.

UVa is a land of zombies with excellent standardized test scores.

Hee hee hee. When else am I going to get the chance to link to an article that uses "zombies" and "excellent standardized test scores" in the same sentence?

Toy guns are much safer in the hands of adults

Remember a few days ago, when I was bitching about the moronic case of the nine-year-old arrested for waving a toy gun in public? His mom was charged, too, when all she was trying to do, allegedly, was beg the police to let her "delinquent" son off with a warning.

Devoted Reader Nick pointed out a little inconsistency in the approach our police take towards citizens with toy guns. Kids, who probably have no idea what they did wrong, get arrested. Adults who wander into a congressional office building with toy guns as part of their costumes, however, get let off the hook:

The House of Representatives shut down Thursday following a reported security breach at a nearby congressional office building, but police later determined that a plastic revolver and Halloween costume were to blame and lawmakers went back in session.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said "two staff members bringing in Halloween costumes" were responsible. "I don't think they had any ill intent," he said, adding he expected no charges to be filed.

Bear in mind, the staff had been chatting with the two aides for a while before the gun showed up on the x-ray machine. Good thing it wasn't a real gun, eh?

Now, perhaps U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer, he of good judgement, could wander over and explain to Lorain Officer Joe Novosielski (the guy who arrested the nine-year-old) the concept of toy guns, and the fact that people who own them rarely show "ill intent."

A nine-year-old with a toy gun gets charged with "juvenile delinquency by reason of inducing panic," while two absent-minded aides, whose actions resulted in the House of Representatives being shut down, face no charges.

Is anyone else out there starting to feel like our society is deliberately trying to make life miserable for kids, while letting adults off the hook?

Update: Fellow blogger Daryl C provides yet more data to support this theory - "Principal Accused of Pointing Toy Gun":

A middle school principal who a parent says pointed a toy gun at a seventh-grader was reassigned to a desk job Thursday while school district officials investigate the complaint.

"I was really disturbed, for him to use his authority to intimidate children like that," she said.

I really don't blame her. Principal Samore appears to be using the "tough love" defense here, but given that the kid was sent to the principal's office on completely false charges of having a gun, why did the principal decide to use a gun - even a toy one - to scare him? No gun was found on the kid.

So, to recap: Nine-year-old waving toy gun around - gets arrested. Congressional aides bring toy guns into office building - no punishment. Principal deliberately uses toy gun to frighten wits out of a boy falsely accused of having a gun - gets reassignment to a desk job. He hasn't been fired, nor arrested - just told to sit somewhere else for a while.

You can read parental comments about the school here. At least one parent claims that kids must carry clear backpacks and cannot even use lockers, because "gangs and fights are out of control." And the principal's solution is to use a toy gun to frighten a kid who hadn't done anything wrong?

The "enormous barrier" of mailing a $6 check

When I read stories such as this one (which is real), I understand why there are some people out there who believe that it is asking too much of kids to learn to read and write and do math on a basic level, or that it's asking too much of schools to teach every child the most basic of educational skills:

Roughly 40,000 poor people have been dropped from the Oregon Health Plan this year because of their failure to make monthly premium payments, some as low as $6 a month.

Those dropped can return after six months.

Good thing those poor have advocates to make excuses on their behalf, isn't it? After all, it seems to now be unacceptable to ask that people make even the most minimal efforts on their own behalf. But now that I think about it, maybe Ellen has a point. If schools don't teach kids how to write, how can we expect those kids, who will grow up to be unproductive members of society, to know how to write a check or address an envelope? "Expectations just can't be lowered enough" seems to be their motto in Oregon.

Sheesh. I've heard complaints about the US becoming a "nanny state," but this is ridiculous.

(Via RightWingNews).

"Hogwarts Headaches"

So much for all those efforts to increase literacy rates and love of reading amongst young children. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine blames Harry Potter books for causing headaches, neck, and wrist pain:

Dr. Howard Bennett, a pediatrician writing in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, said he had three otherwise healthy children between 8 and 10 years old complain of headaches for two to three days last summer. One child also complained of neck and wrist pain.

After some questioning, Bennett found that all three had been reading the 870-page "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" book for six to eight hours a day. Two of the children read while lying on their stomachs, and the third propped the book on her legs and rested her head on a pillow...

I have the feeling some parents would love to have the problem of kids who read too long without taking breaks.

Police arrest nine-year-old for "inducing panic"

I suppose schools can't be expected to use judgement in place of zero-tolerance policies when the police are treating nine-year-olds as dangerous criminals, even after they discover that no real guns were involved:

A 9-year-old boy was arrested at gunpoint and handcuffed Saturday because he was waving a toy gun over his head while seated on a bench outside a store, according to a Lorain police report.

Saunders, 28, was also charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest when she pleaded with police not to arrest her son and to give him a warning, according to a police report.

Okay. The gun was painted black; not a good idea for a toy to be using outside on a busy street. I don't blame the officers for assuming at first that it was real - that's how officers stay alive. But to not let the kid go with a warning when they realized it was a toy? And to arrest the mother for trying to protect her child? We're talking about a nine-year-old here. He probably doesn't understand what he did wrong, and I'm pretty sure the law requires that his mother be there while he's being questioned.

The officer obviously felt his hands were tied and that he had to charge anyone who "induced panic" - but let's take this to its logical extreme. Suppose a five-year-old boy had grabbed a real gun from somewhere and gone outside with it. Obviously, the neighbors would have freaked; one of them might have called the police. The first task for the police would have been to get the gun safely away from the child - but would they have arrested the five-year-old as well? Wouldn't common sense suggest that the right thing to do would be to lecture the child and try to impress upon him the dangerous situation that they created? Does the officer really have no latitude in deciding who to arrest? At what point did we decide that nine-year-olds with toy guns deserve arrest in order to be taught that society might misinterpret their innocent actions?

Poll question #1

You know, given that I'm a statistician, you'd think I would have sprung poll questions on you before now. Please note that the poll question specifically separates my reporting on testing and education from my opinions; I'm curious as to how many people come here looking for hard facts vs. how many want to know what I think about those facts.

"Reading, Riting, and Rilly, Rilly Hating Math"

Now, THIS is the way to whine about having to learn math in school. And if you haven't ever read Hissyfits, why not? This collection of brilliant, literary geeks, which isn't updated nearly often enough, contains laugh-out-loud rants about obnoxious co-workers, dysfunctional landlords, and of course, the French.

PETA Elementary

Sacramento's got a new charter school on the way, and it professes to be a "humane" school built around a mission of "non-violence." Debra Saunders has the info:

If you took all failed, trendy education bureaucrat ideas, packaged them in a school and put radical animal-rights activists in charge of it, you'd end up with something like the Humane Education Learning Community — a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade charter school approved by Sacramento's San Juan Unified School District...

Silberman believes that parents could be drawn to the idea of the school because they'll think "this is a new touchy-feely California idea where all the kids are there to be nice to each other" without understanding the radical animal-rights agenda behind it.

And boy, is there ever a radical agenda behind it all. One of the charter petitioners, Dr. Yale Wishnick, is also a board member of PETA, the group that likens the slaughter of chickens to the Holocaust; the same group whose co-founder opposes the use of seeing-eye dogs. Oh, and this is also the same group that has made donations to radical "animal-rights" eco-terrorists such as the Earth Liberation Front. When PETA members espouse "non-violence" towards all, they often don't include people who disagree with them in that category.

Debra chronicles the non-educational education plan in place for the school:

The charter model will "replace discipline based on rewards and punishments with one based on respect, responsibility and reverence"...

Because, as we all know, there's no evidence to suggest that children need disclipline, nor that they respond well to appropriate rewards and punishments.

Here's a clue as to how un-academic the K-6 school is likely to be if it opens next fall: "Mahatma Gandhi (the petition reads) once said, 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its non-human animals are treated.'''(Clue: Gandhi did not use the term "non-human animal.")

Clue: This school is already out to convince its youth that humans who don't revere "non-human animals" don't deserve humane treatment, because it's not above modifying Ghandi quotes to leave out any inference that we should treat human animals with respect and compassion as well.

I needn't modify any PETA quotes to clarify their lack of compassion for human animals: "It would be great if all the fast-food outlets, slaughter-houses, these laboratories and the banks who fund them exploded tomorrow." - Bruce Friedrich, PETA spokesperson.

While the petition promises rigorous academics, it's hard to find advanced math or challenging literature buried under the avalanche of edu-jargon, as in "value of relationships," "a safe learning environment for students to speak about their own authentic feelings and experiences," "class bonding" and "constructivist and multicultural education and thematic, project-based learning."

Wow. I didn't think that much eduspeak could be crammed into one petition.

Where's the math? The kids may not know how to multiply, but math classes will help students "explore economic costs as they relate to environmental degradation, the loss of wildlife and companion animal overpopulation." (No indoctrination there.)

I have to assume that they will not actually teach math at this school, because it doesn't take much math to understand that much of what is pushed as environmental legislation is based on bad science.

Other readers sent links to the original SacBee story about this charter school; my apologies for not being able to post it before now.

Another friend of mine, online

Well, he doesn't have a blog yet, and he thinks I'm tacky for having an online Amazon wishlist. He also terms my URL as "wonderfully narcissistic." But hey, I'm still very proud of my friend Lee for being published in The New Mobility. As he explains it, he is a "quad," or quadriplegic, and I remember hearing his tales of the creatures that came crawling from the woodworks to "heal" him when he was first injured. Severe injury does seem to attract the quacks and the con men. The funny thing is, the guy in that illustration looks like him, too.

He's already considering a freelance web design career; if I could only get him to start a blog as well. No, it doesn't need to be about his disability, although, as you can see from the story linked above, his insights on that topic are compelling. He's always been a great writer and storyteller, though, and the boy needs to get online daily, as far as I'm concerned.

The blue pill of priapism

When the Forest School in Winnersh (southern England) implemented their no-drugs policy, I bet they never anticipated students would attempt this violation of the rules. The anonymous quote is hilarious.

Friday favorites

Let's see, what to write about this morning? I have to be more careful about snide asides and poking my stick into hornet's nests - if I pick on the teachers' unions, Michael will swat my knuckles with a ruler; if I insult Women's Studies programs any more, Ms. Frizzle will slap me into next week; if I make even one small typo, Chun the Unavoidable will insult my intelligence.

By the way, this is how my week at work has gone, too.

I figure it's time for another Friday Favorites post; pure opinion means there's less likelihood of me screwing something up.

This week's favorites are:

1. Monica Belluci. Obviously, I don't love her for the same reasons as 98% of the straight male population of the planet (I figure blind men are immune to her charms). I love her because she appeared in a major motion picture as a sex symbol with an unaerobicized, un-liposuctioned belly, and because she has fine lines around her eyes. In fact, I love her because she's willing to look her age (which happens to be the same as my age). I remember seeing photos of her ten years ago when she was a struggling actress and model in Italy. She actually looks better now, seemingly without having made major changes to her appearance. I love late bloomers.

2. Halloween candy. No, not just the mini-sized versions of regular candy, but the good candy in scary shapes. Peppermint Batties, Snickers Pumpkins, and Peeps Cocoa Bats are my favorites right now. I swear, they taste better in these altered designs....(and do not miss X-Entertainment's Halloween Countdown, which includes a hilarious segment on the Cocoa Bats).

Who am I kidding? I love EVERYTHING about Halloween; Snickers Pumpkins are just the icing on the cake (and the reason that I probably won't be able to fit into my witch costume next Friday night). The goth subculture has become so much a part of the culture that I needn't wait for Halloween each year to stock up on skull candleholders, black lipstick, and giant pink sequined bats, but I still love seeing all that stuff in the front rows of stores during October.

3. Tomato Nation. Freelance writer Sars Bunting writes giggle-icious articles about various topics including (but most definitely not limited to) her baseball mania, The Ministry of Silly Cat Walks, entering a spelling bee with her parents, the worst hangover ever recorded, and the terrors of driving in snow.Her advice column is pretty good, too.

4. Finding Nemo. Out on DVD November 4th. WaHOO. The DVD includes a feature that turns your TV screen into an animated aquarium.

5. The Pyramid Collection. I don't care if it is "Magick for the Masses" or "The Occult Department Store," I absolutely love their stuff. I try to limit what I buy (see #7, below), but I'm entranced every time I open the catalogue. I already have two of those handpainted cat collectibles, by the way, but mine have flames and camo patterns (and I bought them elsewhere for 5 dollars less).

6. Simple pleasures, like tickling my sensitive boyfriend while someone is trying to take our photo, or getting my spare bedroom in order so that my cat can snuggle in a lump under the new blanket.

7. And speaking of simple pleasures, I'm also into the simplicity movement, aka "Voluntary Simplicity". I don't like that second phrase; it seems both more pretentious and more desperate, as though the practitioners want to make damn sure that everyone knows they chose not to spend money on nice cars and cable TV. I'm not interested in the movement because I think it makes me a superior person, or because it helps save the planet, or any of that sanctimonious blah blah blah.

I just want to go back to being satisfied with less, with being more careful with my spending, and to be able to save more money so that the big things that really matter - like my house, or my health - don't get compromised because I nickle-and-dimed all my money away on little, meaningless thing. Sure, it's not going to be easy, especially for a workaholic spendaholic like me, but Simple Living is my bible of the moment. We'll see how far I get with it.

A rare find

Man, this kid doesn't know how lucky he is:

CENTERTOWN, Ky. - Hunter York was afraid of snakes, but he couldn't resist the two-headed reptile he found. Hunter, 10, said he picked up the black king snake with a stick, then noticed it grabbed the stick with both heads.

"If they're that rare, I'm going to hit up (talk-show hosts David) Letterman, (Jay) Leno and everybody I can think of," he said. "I'm going to milk it for all it's worth."

Such snakes are indeed rare, not least because they don't survive in the wild for long, and often require special care to be kept in captivity (the heads will sometimes fight over food). The San Diego zoo, for example, has had only two of them, one of which is still alive (the former one, Thelma and Louise, is featured in all her glory here, and I've seen the current one, a little black-and-white gem of a California King, in person).

Interestingly, almost every two-headed snake of which I am aware (yes, I keep track of such things) has been a king or a corn snake (an exception is here; the Spanish snake is a member of the Elaphe genus). Whether it's just because those types of snakes are very common in this country (where it might be more likely to be reported to the media), or whether those species are more susceptible to producing Siamese twins, I don't know. I'm not sure if any two-headed snakes that have ever been discovered were venomous.

Anyway, I'd never go the fame route - but I'd sure as heck auction a rare little beauty like that off to a zoo or reptarium, where it would be properly cared for.

Vandals flunk intelligence test

I think I need a new category entitled, "Idiots," because these guys are what you'd see if you looked that word up in a dictionary:

A gang of vandals broke into a school and took photographs of themselves causing thousands of pounds worth of damage ... and then left the camera at the scene, police said today. The photographs show the face of at least one suspect while another is seen drawing graffiti on the wall of a classroom at Wicor Primary School in Portchester, Hampshire.

"They are too old because it is a primary school. The only thing we can imagine is they decided to take photographs of themselves and apparently mistakenly left the camera behind."

Too old for primary school, but obviously not too intelligent for it.

SAT cartoons

One of my favorite cartoons, Save Havens by Bill Holbrook, ran SAT-related cartoons in the paper a couple of weeks ago. They're online now, and here are the first three:

Like, Shakespeare's really got it goin' on, you know?

British students aren't following the rules of the Queen's English too closely, even in their A-level papers, and have been warned that they will be flunked for use of "slang and email abbreviations:"

PUPILS were last night warned they will fail exams if they keep using slang and email abbreviations instead of proper English.

Dr Bernard Lamb, chairman of the Queen’s English Society, said teachers were not correcting pupils because they feared it would make them unpopular. He added: “The use of this kind of language is terrible.”

Okay, I don't know what's worse, students who can't think of any better way to describe Cleopatra than as a "player" - or teachers who fear unpopularity more than ghetto slang. If teachers are afraid to correct pupils, then why are they still considered to be "teachers?

The missing middlebrow

This article about the disappearance of the "middlebrow" culture caught my eye over at Instapundit:

I grew up in the Age of the Middlebrow, that earnest, self-improving fellow who watched prime-time documentaries and read the Book of the Month. That was me, in spades. I was born in a small Missouri town in 1956, the year Dwight Eisenhower was re-elected by a landslide, and as far back as I can remember, I was eager to learn what was going on beyond the city limits of that small town, out in the great world of art and culture...I already knew a little something about people like Willem de Kooning and Jerome Robbins, thanks to Time and Life magazines and The Ed Sullivan Show, and what little I knew made me want to know more.

Which brings us right back to the problem of cultural illiteracy. How can we do anything about it if we can’t even agree on the fact that it is a problem—or about what basic cultural facts ordinary people should be expected to know? The answer is simple: we can’t.

I think what fascinates me about this essay is that it seems related to some of the controversies in American education today. Those same "intelligentsia" who teach children to consider graffiti to be the same level of "art" as Da Vinci's work are the same folks who consider it "imperialistic" to demand that all children in US school learn to speak English well. These are the folks who consider it "unfair" to hold all children to the same standard, as opposed to moving the standards about to reflect various "cultural" influences. These are the same people who value "identity politics" so highly that we risk a return to judging people only by the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character (or the evidence of their academic achievement).

How, indeed, does a school decide what to teach, when there is such a widespread disavowal of the idea that there one middlebrow culture to which every American should have access? One can argue that the middlebrow culture can be expanded to include other information not emphasized in the past, but in my mind, the intelligentsia do a poor job of explaining why black children should learn more about Malcolm X than George Washington or Shakespeare. When even Columbus Day celebrations are controversial and opposed by those with limited knowledge of American history, or biased political ideologies, it seems doubtful that even the much-honored discoverer (or re-disoverer) of America can remain part of the "common heritage of mankind."

Ignorance is bliss

You know, sometimes it's just better not to know how people are finding your site. I was exploring the CPanel's available statistics and found the top six search engine query words that lead people to Number 2 Pencil:

#reqs: search term
-----: -----------
413: pencil
401: hornstine
369: blair
318: naked
267: school
262: teachers

EeeeUURgh.

The cognitive "elite"

I LOVE this entry by Best of the Web, which takes the alleged "cognitive elite" to task (in part because this is the same group that was so furious nine years ago about Herrnstein and Murray's book about the emerging cognitive elite):

The emergence of a cognitive elite may be inevitable in a knowledge-based economy, but it is a development Murray and Herrnstein viewed with considerable concern. What's fascinating is that liberals, who denounced Murray and Herrnstein over the racial aspect of their book, seem to view rule by the cognitive elite as the natural order of things. And of course they think they are the cognitive elite. We saw this in Jonathan Chait's Bush-hating cover story last month in The New Republic (which was, but is no longer, available online), in which Chait opined that the "striving, educated elite" views the president, because of his success despite his "dullness," as "an affront to the values of the liberal meritocracy...."

If it comes as a revelation to the Democratic Undergrounders that 20% is less than a majority, they're not exactly rocket scientists, are they?

Classic. How come whenever a psychometrician mentions IQ testing, the left-wing goes bananas and start blathering about "multiple intelligences," yet when left-wingers get mad, they have no problem with claiming to have higher IQ's than the rest of us? I don't know how many times I've heard the same people condemn merit/IQ testing, and then call President Bush a "moron" in the same breath. They want a meritocracy, but only if they come out on top.

My library groweth

For those of you who were so kind to send me books for my birthday, thank you so much. As you can see from this picture, I suffer from a great lack of books, even though the other side of the room is just as crowded. You know, I just don't have enough to read, no matter what anybody says. :)

Test yourself

Take the Center for Individual Freedom's History and Civics Quiz here. And no, I'm not telling you my score.

Toys for iraqi children.

Bloggers Dean Esmay, Donald Sensing, and Chief Wiggles have organized an Iraqi Toy Drive for the youth of Iraq. The details are here. Be sure to read the comments for lots of good suggestions about inexpensive toys that will be suitable for Iraq's kids, and make sure you use the most recent mailing address for them (you're shipping the goods to Chief Wiggles at an APO address, so you're not paying for postage to Iraq).

I think I'll be hitting my local dollar store today to stock up on crayons and drawing paper, and I urge the rest of you to do the same. Or, there's always the option of visiting the Oriental Trading Company, which has loads of great stuff, and they will ship to an APO box. And don't miss the heartfelt review of the toy drive (and the condemnation of those who would oppose it) over at A Small Victory.

ba ha ha ha!

This has nothing to do with testing, but it tickles me so to see an identity thief get what he deserves. I just had to post it.

Bugging the educators

A student in a California high school wants to start a "Caucasian" club - but the membership rules aren't quite what you'd expect:

Lisa McClelland says she isn't a racist. She says her campaign for a Caucasian Club at her California high school is a move toward diversity, not bigotry. She says everyone is invited -- and nobody will be excluded.

McClelland's ethnic background includes American Indian, Hispanic, Dutch, German, Italian and Irish. She says she and her friends feel slighted by other clubs at Freedom High School in Oakley, such as the Black Student Union and the Asian Club.

I can understand why she feels slighted. But if everyone's included, why call it the Caucasian Club? Just to make a point? Just to get under the skin of the PC crowd? Just to give the principal fits? I mean, if you want to get creative and funny with names in ways that will make your principal break out in hives, this is the way to do it.

I got them standardized testing blues...

The September 3rd strip of Safe Havens by Bill Holbrook:

So much for parental guidance

Urgh. Zwire reports today that a mother in Pennsylvania is fighting her daughter's dismissal from school. It seems the 13-year-old engaged in oral sex on the school bus with a male classmate while returning from a field trip. The mother is fighting the dismissal because the school district was allegedly "not clear in its written policies that oral sex on a bus was unacceptable behavior" :

Judge George E. James disagreed, ruling that the expulsion was legal and was supported by substantial evidence. James upheld the disciplinary action and denied the appeal...

Neither the bus driver nor two chaperones noticed what was going on. Administrators learned of the incident after several pupils told a guidance counselor, who reported it to Ralston...

Um, mom? Fighting your child's expulsion on these grounds is not what you should be concentrating on right now. If you must be involved in threatening legal action, you should be demanding that the driver and chaperone be fired/sanctioned; the chaperone is, at the very least, guilty of "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" by not providing any chaperonage whatsoever. If you have any sort of case against the school district, I think this would be it.

But the legal battles should be the least of your concerns right now. You should also be urging your daughter to attend the county's mental health agency for counseling, which should give her the strength to understand what she did wrong and to find a whole new set of friends - ones who won't encourage her to engage in risky sexual activity in public.

The daughter needs emotional support right now, and the mother's legal action that splits hairs over whether such behavior needs to be explicitly prohibited isn't providing it. This type of legal battle suggests that any behavior not explicitly prohibited should be considered okay, which is most definitely not the case.

You can't go back to high school

Two twenty-something Ohioans are in a heap of trouble for their "prank" of going to a high school and posing as "students":

Two men who tried to pass as students at an Ohio high school were jailed on charges including disorderly conduct, trespassing and inducing panic. Lancaster High School was evacuated for about an hour as a result of the prank Thursday morning by Nathan Shahan, 20, and Anthony Bobo, 21.

Evacuated. Nice. Shahan and Bobo obviously didn't consider that their presence might be taken seriously, surprising given that there's no good reason for two men their age to be prowling around a high school, posing as students. And no, the movie, "Never Been Kissed" doesn't count.

A teacher stopped Shahan as he tried to enter the school, and the two got into a scuffle, said Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said. Sheriff's deputies found Bobo inside the school at 7:45 a.m. Bobo was charged with a felony count of inducing panic for being inside the school. He also was charged with misdemeanor counts of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia and violating probation.

Sheesh. Bobo really IS a bobo. Not only is he trying to get into a high school, but he's dumb enough to scuffle with a police officer while he's got weed and a pipe (or something worse) in his pockets. Something tells me Bobo didn't crack the books too hard at his own high school, assuming he made it that far.

Shahan was charged with a felony count of parole violation and misdemeanor counts of assault and underage alcohol consumption. Bond was set at $50,000 each, and both remained in jail Friday.

Shahan is a bigger bobo, considering he was on parole and presumably had alcohol in his system, yet was under 21. Sheesh. I think the appropriate movie reference here would be, "Dumb and Dumber."

making it easy for counterfeiters

For all of my Devoted Readers who regularly bitch and moan about how the US public school system can't teach kids to do arithmetic, as evidenced by the fact that cashiers these days need the computerized registers to guide them, because they're utterly unable to make change on their own, without help, I give you....this Food Lion cashier as candidate for "Bonehead of the Year" (the competition for the award is stiff, though).

Apparently, the amount of change given was correct in this instance, but we have to assume that's because the computerized register was working that day. And isn't the corporate policy stated at the end hilarious? Guess Food Lion will have to make that policy a bit more specific, just in case something like this happens again...

"2-4-6-8! Windows XP is so great!"

"Microsoft to build city high school"...the headline says it all.

The Philadelphia School District and Microsoft Corp. will partner to build a new $46 million high school steeped in the latest technology for learning, business functions - even sports.

The school, which will serve 700 students in a location not yet determined, is the first venture of its kind for Microsoft, which in the past has provided support to schools on a smaller scale. It is scheduled to open in Sept. 2006, but district chief executive officer Paul G. Vallas said he hopes to have it ready a year earlier.

Technology or no, if the cafeteria food tastes good, it's not a real high school. And what does a "paperless" high school mean, anyway? Homework on computers only? Digitized report cards? The entire school IM'ing one another instead of reading that downloaded copy of Romeo and Juliet? Will kids be rebels not with cigarettes and leather jackets but with Linux and Macs? The mind reels...

A memorable way to start the school year

It's the first day of school at most places 'round the country, and what surprises have already popped up?

Well, for starters, there are the Striking Catholic Teachers of Philadelphia, who will be holding up classes for 23,300 students starting tomorrow. The unionized teachers claim recent pay raises will be wiped out by increased health plan costs. The schools intend to move forward with administrative work that doesn't require teacher presence.

There's a strike going on at Yale as well, this one being held by "clerical, technical, service and maintenance workers." Some professors are planning to hold classes off campus. Bewildered freshmen, whose dorm dining halls have been closed, have been wandering around campus looking for nourishment, and upperclassmen have been given rebates to buy groceries off-campus.

And speaking of nourishment (or not), some little Californians got the shock of their lives today, as they realized their schools are no longer selling candy or fatty foods. Soy milk, turkey burgers, and skim-milk pizzas are now on the menus, while doughnuts and Starbursts have been deep-sixed.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, schools have given in to the trendiness not of soy milk, but of cell phones, which will now be allowed in some schools as long as they're kept turned off. Astonishingly, for the past 14 years, it's been against the law in Louisiana for students or adults to carry wireless phones in public schools - and some parishes are sticking to that law.

Teachers in Washington DC have been busy transforming their schoolrooms into oases of color and fragrance, filled with potted plants, pets, and air fresheners. Their theory is, as one teacher put it, students will be more productive "if I can create an atmosphere that focuses on simplicity and harmony and peace ." And reading and writing and 'rithmetic, don't forget that. Let's see, if Ms. Smith has $400 to spend at Pier One, and paper umbrellas cost $.40 apiece....

New schools have emerged in NYC, created from renovated churches and mansions. One school was so Gothic as to prompt reporter David Dunlap to comment, "Hogwarts will soon be in session."

In Boston, the big surprise was that the annual invasion of over 250,000 students went smoothly for once. Students ate Krispy Kreme doughnuts, hauled dorm refrigerators, books, and musical equipment back and forth, and didn't cause the expected snarly traffic jams. Boston has, I believe, the largest number of college students (or greatest number of colleges, I can't remember which) of any city in the US, which gave rise to this classic exchange from This is Spinal Tap:

IAN: Oh there's uhh...the other thing is that the uh...the Boston gig has been cancelled.
NIGEL: What?
IAN: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

Back when I first saw that movie, in SC, I didn't get the joke.

At least one student's move to Boston didn't go smoothly, though. A senior at the New England School of Photography got mad when movers tried to bilk her after transporting her furniture. Apparently the movers tried the same scam on Karen O'Neill that many an unscrupulous mover has tried before; once her possessions were "hostage" in the van, the movers demanded $150 more than expected to unload her furniture. Karen was fiesty, though (and had a written contract to back her up), and decided to jump into the back of the van to prevent the movers from driving off.

So the movers locked her in the van and threatened to take off with her. Thank God her friend called 911. The police arrived after Karen was freed, but made sure the contract price was enforced. The movers should have been thrown in the pokey, too, if you ask me. "Almost getting kidnapped" shouldn't have been on Karen's "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay.

Angry cheerleaders, naked teachers, and drunken students

Lawsuits - they're not just for top scholars anymore! An angry cheerleader in Westmoreland County (PA) is suing her school over her "demotion" from the varsity squad. Once again, it appears to be a "he-said/she-said" situation; cheerleader Felicia Huffine claims that her past record of varsity performance should exempt her from tryouts. Plus, she skipped a cheerleading camp in July; she says she was given permission to skip, while the coaches say she knew that skipping would result in her being removed from the squad.

Felicia, you're not alone! In 2002, Wisconsin cheerleader Andrea Warren sued her school after she was "unfairly" stripped of the title of team captain. It seems Andrea admitted to drinking alcohol at a party and smoking on school grounds, and graciously accepted the punishment of having her title removed for her junior year. However, when the squad voted Andrea as captain the next year, the school decided to extend the punishment and prevent her from being captain her senior year, which might have affected her ability to earn cheerleading scholarships.

-------------------------

A Japanese school teacher, with a reputation for "diligence,", was diligent indeed in his pursuit of comfort during a heat wave. I doubt that "50-yard-dash" from the police did much to cool him off, though.

-------------------------

Rapides Parish (LA) is closing a loophole with its decision to automatically expel students who appear intoxicated at school or at school-related events. Breathalyzer tests may be used, but note that the symptoms of "speech alterations, bizarre behavior and unsteadiness of gait or posture" may also be used to expel students. Bizarre behavior? Yeah, that's a clear-cut concept, especially considering we're talking about teenagers here.

The backstory is amusing:

The change comes after the Rapides Parish School Board settled a lawsuit in May with a Brame Middle School student who was expelled for testing positive for marijuana at school.

His parents sued the School Board because the previous policy only prohibited drug possession, which does not apply to drugs inside the body.

Bah ha ha haaa! You mean some pothead's parents actually supported their kid's decision to be high during school by insisting that actually consuming wacky weed is not the same thing as possessing it? Boy, talk about setting a great example for your kids.

In response, the school seems to be cracking down on a whole range of behaviors, including fights between kids over the age of 11 (now requires a 911 call), truancy (now requires a referral to Juvenile Court), and the use of cell phones (forbidden at school-related events).

-------------------------

Finally, it's "Google for me but not for thee" as New Zealand's cheating students are getting caught by teachers who enter plagiarized essay phrases into Internet search engines. It's amazing that the students didn't foresee that their teachers could find key phrases online in the same way the students did. Live by the Internet, die by the Internet.

Friday favorites

Umph. Long week. Lots of meetings. Lots of recovering data from a server that was down all last week. A 24-hour bout of Can't-Get-Out-Of-Bed-itis. Time to think about things that I enjoy that don't involve score gaps or standard deviations:

(1) Walter Olson's Overlawyered.com. I cover only the ludicrous lawsuits that involves the educational system; Walter covers 'em all. Some are almost too hard to take - a cop wins over 87K pounds in damages because he was traumatized by watching someone die when his car hit theirs? - but some are funny enough to balance out the maddening ones. Like the story about Riverside, CA, whose citizens want to sue Fox Broadcast Co. for labeling them as "white trash" in a (fictional) TV series. Besides the ludicrousness of wanting to sue over a comment about an entire town by a fictional character in a fictional series, it should be pointed out to Riverside that, at least where I come from, one of the definitions of "white trash" is "people who sue at the drop of a hat, and hope to enrich themselves through lawsuits, rather than working for a living."

(2) Snopes.com. An utterly invaluable research tool for getting the real story behind hoaxes, frauds, scams, urban legends, rumors, real viruses, and any other goofy story making the rounds. Go to "What's New" to get the latest on Sobig.F, the relationship between a man's hand size and the size of some of his other bits, and whether Fox News used an outdated photo of NYC to illustrate a story about the recent blackout.

(3) Movie review sites like the Movie Review Query Engine, Rotten Tomatoes, and The Greatest Films. I'm addicted to film reviews and enjoy reading them even for movies I have no intention of seeing. For movies I do see, I read on average between 10 and 20 reviews for each. I just love knowing what someone else thought of the film experience, and what someone else caught that I did not.

The MRQE allows you to type in any movie name, and it retrieves every online review. Rotten Tomatoes ranks movies by the number of tomatoes thrown at them, so it's fun to root through the movies with the most appalling ratings (Gigli, anyone?). And The Greatest Films site rehashes all the classics, with lengthy reviews and good background information.

Of course, when it comes to review of bad movies, there's always the site for which I proofread, Jabootu.com.

(4) Bill Holbrook's comic strips - Safe Havens, On the FastTrack, and Kevin & Kell. The last one is particularly inventive; a group of anthropomorphic animals recreate a very human environment and address topics like parenting, mixed marriages (herbivores and carnivores - just think of the in-law issues!), adolescence, a real dog-eat-dog corporate world, racism (or, rather, speciesism), and dealing with spam on the internet. The Bradys' job was easy, compared to the effort required to blend a family composed of two wolves, a rabbit, and a porcupine (she was adopted). If you've got serious time to waste, start at the beginning (1995!) and read straight on through.

When teenagers have too much time on their hands

Some twisted teen showed up on the first day of classes at an elementary school near Boston, complete with "Jason" hockey mask and a bad attitude:

A twisted teen wearing a Jason-like hockey mask hid outside an Orange elementary school yesterday morning, scaring children as they showed up for the first day of school, police said.

Police and a canine dog searched the area but didn't catch the prankster.

Dude, how little of a life do you have to have to spend a summer morning this way? Police, if you want to catch this guy, I'd suggest going online - I bet he doesn't have many friends in real life.

Shades of Blair

So, for all you Blair-watchers out there who have figured how a student can earn a 4.3+ GPA, become a super-volunteer, and write essays for newspapers, all while suffering from a chronic-fatigue-type illness, I have a new question for you:

How does a woman collect almost $200K in disability benefits while giving aerobic performances in beauty pageants?

Denise "Dee" Marie Henderson, 43, was crowned Mrs. Minnesota International in 1999 and competed in the Mrs. U.S. International pageant the same year while receiving the benefits. In both contests she competed in aerobic, evening gown and other events, prosecutors said.

According to the complaint, Henderson falsely claimed she was disabled by a 1995 auto accident that caused headaches and prevented her from sitting for more than 20 minutes, sleeping, reading her daily mail or lifting more than a few pounds. She received Social Security benefits going back to 1996.

So, she can't lift a Victoria's Secret catalogue, nor sit and peruse it for 20 minutes - but she can parade around stage in one of their skimpy bathing suits and high heels, and look good doing it, and even compete in aerobic events (dancing, presumably). Mrs. Henderson is attractive, with four childen, one of them adopted. She even runs a website for her adopted daughter, complete with really cheesy poetry.

Pretty darn active for a woman who can't read her own mail, wouldn't you say? Oh, but she's "innocent until proven guilty," according to the pageant director, despite evidence of her owning two businesses during a time when she claimed she could not work:

When she took the title of Mrs. Minnesota International in March 1999, Denise "Dee" Marie Henderson was either waging a private battle against intense physical pain or defrauding the federal Social Security Disability Insurance Program.

Federal officials say she also started two businesses: Queen Bears Closet and Crowning Moments. Among other things, the businesses promote the sale of pageant gowns, aerobic wear and nutritional supplements. During this time, Henderson was claiming that she could not work, which is a requirement for Social Security disability, the complaint said.

The Hendersons claim they have many supporting people who will see them through this tough time. But will they see the videotape that insurance companies took of Mrs. Henderson carrying heavy luggage and a 20-minute underwater dive?

I know, I know, this has nothing to do with educational testing. I just find it amusing that someone could claim to be totally disabled, yet own two businesses and be active, as both competitor and organizer, on the very stressful beauty-pageant circuit. Here's a hint, insurance frauds: Don't be so public about the fact that you're lying to the government. Cashing a disability check while still ensconced in a tiara, evening gown, and sash is bound to draw some attention.

Motivated to learn English

Out in Las Vegas, casino owners aren't messing around with trendy English instruction like bilingual education, and they aren't at the mercy of school boards who demand "politically-correct" methods. They just want to teach their immigrant workers English in the fastest way possible - immersion - and they've been quite successful at it:

While battles continue to rage in states like Oregon, Texas, Colorado, Illinois and New York, where some language education "experts" still cling to an outmoded construction known as bilingual education, Las Vegas hotel-casinos teach English the way new Americans have been learning it for generations: immersion, sink or swim.

...A middle-aged Bellagio guest room attendant who wouldn't even pick up a ringing telephone for fear that the caller might speak English became confident enough to pick up the phone by the end of her four-month English course at the casino. Another employee, whose English skills needed some honing through the program for her job as a bus person, a few weeks ago interviewed to become assistant manager at the hotel's buffet restaurant.

Interesting.

Friday favorites roundup

Time for my weekly ritual of pulling my head out of Google's search engine, putting the test scores aside, and posting on some of my favorite (non-testing-related) things:

1. The Gothic Miss Manners. She's a scream. I think the site has been discontinued, because there's no entry past December 2002, but I love her anyway. Anyone who's my age who describes her look as "the Gothic Mary Poppins," who gently refers to young goths trying out their looks as "baby bats," and who reminds us all that, "Friends Don't Let Friends Dress Like The Crow" is my kind of woman. My nightclubbing look tends to be gothic Grace Kelly, so I understand her desire to come up with a unique look that is in-your-face, yet polite.

2. VH1's "I Love the 70's". My boyfriend and I have watched every ep this week, and we're just screaming at all the cheesy muttonchops and the seriously ugly people they used in commercials back then - and the products. The really stupid products that became fads and helped their "inventors" make millions back then. Days of the Week panties? Oh, I had those.

One ep featured the movie, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Willy-freaking-Wonka. Yet another link in the "HR Pufenstuf-Electric Company-Land Of The Lost" chain of evidence that everyone was on drugs in the 70's, even those responsible for children's entertainment. I've never seen the ending, because when I saw this movie as a child, I went into hysterics at the sight of the little girl blowing up like a giant blueberry and couldn't watch any more of it. Gave me nightmares for weeks.

3. The new Soho line of handbags from Coach. I treat myself to a nice new bag each season, and I've already found my fall bag this year. In purple, oh yes.

4. Petfinder.Org. This is how you find out what animal shelters are near you, what their needs and contact information are, and what animals they have available. I work for P.A.L.S. on Thursday evenings, and if you're anywhere near Philly, I can personally recommend a cat or two who needs a good home. Want someone lively who gives licks (and love bites)? Snickers is your girl. Are you willing to take care of an FIV+ cat? You can't do better than this cutie.

Oh, and I named this guy. He came in as a stray off the mean streets of West Philly with a huge wound (on the side you can't see), from some machinery or something. It was amazing he was still alive, given that we could practically see through to his insides. He seemed very tough; hence, "Rocky". We thought he'd be shy, feral, and scarred; instead, he's healed perfectly and is the sweetest loverboy of a cat.

The dangerous consequences of low IQ...

....in penguins, that is.

Personally, I can't think of anything I'd like to see more than a penguin waddling around freely in a zoo, but I suppose it's unsafe and stressful for them. And, bless their hearts, they're still smarter than this kid.

The author here gets bonus points for masterful use of understatement:

"On Aug. 12, a female cheetah climbed up a wall in the River's Edge area and leaped out of her pen. She startled some visitors before Zoo workers herded her back to her enclosure. "

"Startled," you say. To me, "startled" is the sensation you feel when someone appears before you unexpectedly, or when you accidently miss the bottom step going down the basement. A loose cheetah would conjure up sensations more emphatic than "startled," I would imagine.

Fighting the brain leakage

Yay! Joanne Jacobs is on her new Moveable Type site! I love MT, and I hope she enjoys it as well.

Today, she's got a link to a hilarious Dave Barry article, in which he ponders the mysteries of standardized tests:

Knowledge is our nation's most precious resource, after agriculture and Ray Charles. Yet study after study shows that American children are not learning as well as children from foreign countries such as Sweden and Hawaii.

Or maybe it's time that we parents stopped passing the buck on education. Maybe instead of pointing the finger at everybody else, we should take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror, and place the blame for our children's lousy test scores where it clearly belongs: on our children. They have a terrible attitude.

Love his conclusion, in which he implores kids to study hard and learn a lot of facts because we, their parents, are getting stupider by the day.

No power outages - for now

As you can tell by my uninterrupted bloggage, Philly suffered no power outages (here's why), although train service out of the city was delayed. In fact, I didn't know there were any outages until the TVs in the bar in which I was drinking last night started showing CNN's "Breaking News" flashes and someone said, "Hey, how 'bout those blackouts?" Um, what blackouts? It's a little surreal for me to be on the web all the time, yet not know what's happening just a couple of hours up the road.

Anyway, on Jeff Jarvis's blog, he posted a tale of urban survivalism that I love. One commenter had given his friends in NYC very cheap, very creative, and very useful Christmas gifts that had been completely unappreciated - until now:

I'm an alarmist........and I've been the butt of many jokes since Christmas. I took hat boxes and spray painted them with glow in the dark paint. In them I put lanterns that run on batteries, huge flashlights, walkman radio's, old phones that require no power to work, heavy duty hospital supply face masks, MRE's from the army navy supply on Canal Street, juice boxes, and a large supply of replacement batteries. They all got a keyring laser light. I taped my phone number to the phones and laminated a card for everyone's wallet with my number on it. My friend in Soho, who is an artist, displays my box in an Andy Warhol kind of way with his art. I'd like to say I had the last laugh last night but I am just relieved. My friends and family, when they made it home, had light and a radio telling them it wasn't a terrorist attack. They were able to tell their neighbors what was going on. I spent the night as a check in point reuniting people with their significant others and parents with children. It didn't take more than $40 bucks per box and a little planning to be prepared. If you could have heard the frantic tone in my friends voice when at 11:30 he still had not heard from his girlfriend and the relief when I told him she had called and was planning to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to get home (she works midtown) and the fact that she had stopped off with a few friends to partake in the free beer pubs were offering, you'd make a box. The only one who talked to all the kids about a plan was me, the alarmist. I'm happy to know I have no MIA's, just a few people sleeping off the free beer, and a big Cheshire cat smile on my face.

That box sounds like a darn good idea, because it could have been me walking home from 38th Street to 69th Street last night, in the heat, only to arrive at a house where no radios, lights, or phones would have been working. Ugh.

TGIF

Once again, it's Friday, Thank God. It's been a hell week at work, but much play awaits me this weekend. Oh, okay, and a lot of housecleaning too, but I enjoy that. Sometimes.

I figure it's time for another list of my favorite things so you don't think I sit huddled in front of a computer crunching numbers 24-7. Someone needs to put a human face on psychometrics; it might as well be me.

1. Pop Will Eat Itself. A semi-obscure (in the US) British band that can only be described as a mixture of hip-hop, pop, funk, dance, and industrial (in their later incarnations). They were active only from 1986 to 1996, so if they're one of your favorite bands too, then you're probably a mid-30's former punk/goth/altchick like me.

One of the cooler things about them was that they spawned a very well-organized online cabal of fans who called themselves PWEINation. There's not much to see there now, unsurprisingly for a band that's been defunct for 7 years, but in their day this was the coolest site/message board/meeting place around. I still have one of the last PWEINation t-shirts ever printed.

Their CD "Amalgamation" has been in my player constantly as of late. And the lead singer, Clint Mansell, has been very active in the world of soundtracks. If you saw Requiem for A Dream and loved the haunting strings and the disturbing techno, well, he was the composer for that. Amazing stuff.

(NB: If you're unfamiliar with the movie, the site is weird because the movie is weird. You'll need Flash, and the "infomercial" at the beginning is there because that was part of the movie's plot. When that page stops loading, click on what looks to be a banner ad at the top. Other pages take a long time to load, and you'll need to wave the mouse around and go through what appear to be other infomercial pages. Things that seem like error messages really aren't. Trust me; it makes sense given the movie).

2. Cross-stitching. Yep, I'm one of those geeks who sits around and pokes tiny needles through even tinier holes in fabric, all the while ruining my vision while staring at the insanely complicated charts. But don't worry, I don't do needlework of teddy bears holding flowers or anything goofy like that. One of my favorite cross-stitch designers is Teresa Wentzler, who designs all sorts of lovely castle and dragon and medieval charts, and I'm getting ready to start on this design of hers for a friend of mine.

3. Vivid Reptiles. This is the breeder from which I order my snakes, and sometimes I just like to go browse their site. They breed for health and beauty, and their snakes are indeed so vivid that the website gives instructions on how to adjust your monitor color settings, the better to view their amazing critters. Their "Nirvana" page changes regularly and always has information on some amazing serpentarial phenomenon. The current Nirvana page charts the wonders of the Variable Kingsnake, and I have one of those. They are indeed calm, hardy, unshy, and in general wonderful snakes to keep.

I've been amazed by the beauty of snakes since I was a little girl, and it's still a wonder to me that the most common and innocuous of these creatures can seem like little gems of ferocity and color. For example, would you have ever guessed that this fierce and exotic-looking little creature is a garter snake? Beautiful. Just beautiful.

4. The Z Gallerie. This store ROCKS. Think Restoration Hardware or the Pottery Barn, but cheaper, funkier, and less pretentious. The stores (which have much more than shown on the site) usually have great sales. I really really wanted these pillows when I was in the store in North Carolina, but I didn't want to pay to have them shipped back. I also want this clock, which I've seen in several stores, but this is a good price for it.

Update:

5. Baby goats. This is me, last winter, on my dad's land in SC, being nuzzled by my stepmom's favorite little kid. 'Nuff said.

(Another previous list of favorites can be found here)

He gets to count them as dependents on his tax return, too

A cute email arrived in my inbox today from Devoted Reader Richard, who thinks that this is all my doing. I believe he thinks it was my blogging about Pennsylvania's unimpressive test scores that inspired the Governor to take this bold step. I don't have that much clout with Rendell - but isn't a grand idea, nonetheless?:

Gov. Rendell Adopts Every Child in Pennsylvania
(2003-08-14) -- Gov. Ed Rendell announced today that his administration will adopt every child in Pennsylvania to make sure each gets a good education.

Education experts agree that poor performance in public schools is due to a combination of low taxes and bad parenting. The adoption measure should address both of these "systemic flaws."

Hee hee hee.

Learning with Snakes

Homeschool blogger Daryl Cobranchi took his kids to the Summer Science Days Sunday at the Hagley (DE) museum. His four lovely kids got to admire a lovely corn snake, while Daryl's lovely bride stands a lovely ten feet or so away from the snakey. Aw, c'mon over. He won't bite.

And speaking of Daryl, he's got the goods on the report on the performance of Delaware's schools. Conclusion? "The results aren't pretty: the majority of schools in the state, including 25 of the 28 high schools, fell into the "failing" category..." Go read what else he has to say.

MC mathematics hits the streets

Here's a cool new way to learn basic mathematics skills - via hip hop music, i.e., "Schoolhouse Rap.":

Wearing baggy pants and cornrows, a group of hip-hop musicians peddles CDs at a downtown street corner. Lyrics blast out of speakers, the 10-inch woofers and 2-inch tweeters that sit in the back of their van. Listen:

OK, so these aren't Eminem lyrics -- and that's the point. David Printis Sr., his son D.J. and his nephews Alonzo Powell and Everett Roundtree are selling not bootleg rap CDs but Multiplication Hip-Hop. It's intended to teach math to a generation already fluent in rhymes...

Karen Kunkel, an elementary school principal, said she began using Multiplication Hip-Hop last year to teach her second-graders, and she believes the CD is at least partly responsible for her school's improvement on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, a standardized test given to second-graders in Maryland. In the 2001-2002 school year, 23 percent of her second-graders were proficient in math. This past school year, that number was 72 percent. Educators have long used music to dispel the boredom of rote memorization. If you grew up in the 1970s or '80s, you had Schoolhouse Rock. These kids have Schoolhouse Rap.

I think it's a great idea. Heck, I still remember the preamble to the constitution and my 8 times tables thanks to Schoolhouse Rock. And while these tunes might seem like they should be used only outside the classroom, certainly the technique can be used in some form inside the class as well.

One friend of mine who taught middle-school algebra in North Carolina gave an extra credit project where kids had to compose a song around the quadratic equation - and perform the song in front of the class. She got C&W versions, soul versions, rap versions. The kids had a great time doing it, and none of them screwed up that equation on their final exam (although I bet the room was a bit noisy when they were working problems that required it).

Show and Tell at L.A. High

This man put on a show, and someone obviously told - the police. Granted, it was in the middle of the night, so no students were in danger. Gotta love his explanation for his behavior, though.

The other me

Did I ever mention that I was married back when I started graduate school? I had my married name for three years or so, and so my masters degree - and some of the publications on my vita - are in the name of Kimberly Raines. I really liked my married last name, but really disliked my ex-husband, at least once he became the ex, so I went back to Swygert. A lot of my current friends, though, met me as Kimberly Swygert Raines.

Today, a friend of mine who works at ETS obviously has too much on his hands, because he sent me a site that reviews the work of another Kimberly Raines. Let's just say the topic of her writing is a tad more exciting than standardized testing.

Happy, with snakes

I just bought this 1927 photo reprint off eBay, and it arrived today. I'm so happy with it. It's going to go above the python cage - I'm starting a collection of vintage herpetological prints and illustrations. If you see any in an antique or bookstore near you, grab 'em for me, and I'll pay you back.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Hey, I feel like I've deluged you guys with testing-related material today. Although that's ostensibly what this blog is about, I like to mix it up sometimes, throw in a little "diversity" (heh). I love lists, so here's a little primer on My Favorite Things Right Now In No Particular Order. Maybe you'll enjoy some of them, too.

1. Standup comedian Mitch Hedberg is one of the funniest guys around. Think of a pathologically shy and somewhat stoned Steven Wright, and you're 75% there. The rest is indescribably nonsequitural goofiness. He wears dark sunglasses on stage and hides behind his curtain of hair, and just rambles this incredibly funny stuff. On his page, scroll down to the Comedy Central Part 4 performance - it contains his signature skit of "Dufraine, party of two."

My favorite line of his - "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

2. Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue. This is music that they wrote for the lyrics that Woodie Guthrie wrote on his deathbed. Natalie Marchant provides backup vocals. My favorite song is, "Way over yonder in a minor key," which you can listen to on the Amazon site for the CD.

3. My friend Kitty's products at her website, Magickal Essence Candles. She's a very cool chick and that house of hers in the Delaware Valley with "three dogs and five cats" is within walking distance of mine. I know - I've fed those crazy animals many a time. And her patchouli candles smell great!

4. AquaTeen Hunger Force. One of the most bizarre cartoons I've ever seen on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network). One site describes it as, "People-sized food products in the throes of adolescence, solving mysteries and swimming in their neighbor's pool. You'll never look at your french fries the same way, because they might look right back." There's really no other way to put it. You just have to watch the show.

5. Sugar-free Red Bull. It's the reason I'm simultaneously blogging and cleaning my house right now, when normally I'd be draped across the couch, recovering from work.

Mooooove along, class

Well, this is certainly one way to gain international attention for your complaints about your kid's teacher.

Of course, if you pulled this stunt somewhere like New York City, then you'd really get some ink...

At least this way we can't hear them hollering...

These two fun-loving parent, arrested in Maryland for child abuse and reckless driving, are obviously lifetime enrollees in the, "Honey, let's allow the kids make the decisions" school of parenting (or non-parenting, as the case may be). The last sentence of the article strikes me as very funny, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the obligatory, "But I didn't mean to cause any harm" following the admission that, maybe, they did something really boneheaded.

Proofreading public art

Redheaded Rambler Sheila, whom I've linked to previously regarding Make Way For Ducklings, found a posting in her archive she thought I'd like. It's related to my posting about sanitizing test items, in a way, but it's much more amusing.

Pop quiz, lizard-style

One of the nice things about being an amateur herpetologist is that people send me random quotes, photos, stories, etc. about the reptiles I love so much. One good friend sent along a couple of lizard photos from a trip she and a friend took to Topanga Canyon, CA. The photo is really cool, but she doesn't know what kind of lizard it is, and neither do I. If any of you Californian readers know what it is, drop me a line.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled programming...

Leave our prov-alone!

I love Philadelphia.

While the rest of the world natters on about such unimportant events as Tony Blair's speech before Congress, recent uprisings in Iran, the volatile situation in Iraq, and the controversy over whether Dubya lied about his Iraq-Niger intelligence information, the Philadelphia Daily News is focused on one thing:

Hoagiegate.

That's right. Philly residents are furious because outside food has been banned from the new Lincoln Financial Field, where the Philadelphia Eagles are due to start playing this fall. Eagles fanatics are used to stocking up at local delis and hoagie shops before the games, because if there's anything Philly folk take seriously, it's their food. And they want local food, and they don't want to pay too much for it, so the information that food will be available within the stadium, for a premium price from a Boston-based catering service, has been met with near-total derision and anger.

Team president Joe Banner, who raised the hackles of fans before when he tried to ban the use of credit cards for buying tickets, is now officially the most-hated man in Philadelphia. Over $200 million dollars of taxpayer money went into the new stadium, but it's privately managed - or mis-managed, as the case may be.

You can see why we're focused on this at the exclusion of everything else. Why, how are we supposed to rise back up in the rankings of America's Fattest Cities (we're only in fourth place now) if we can't sit and eat humongous, cheap, and very very tasty hoagies while hollering for our Birds? Devious Philadelphians are already plotting boycotts and revenge tactics. The local business owners, who scoff at Banner's claim that banning outside food won't harm their businesses, will be leading the charge against the ban. Furious letters are pouring in to the Daily News. A hoagie-shaped petition flyer is available, and the DN will send each and every one to the Eagles' Front office.

Save our Hoagies!

Did I mention I love Philadelphia?

So, "guilty" is a bad thing, right?

The logical consequence of bad schooling in California? Civil juries will now be instructed in "plain English" as opposed to legal "mumbo-jumbo":

Pleading guilty to confusing jurors for 70 years with complex legal mumbo jumbo, California approved simpler rules on Wednesday that promise to instruct civil juries in plain English. The Judicial Council of California adopted the new rules after a six-year effort to come up with straight-forward instructions that any jury of peers could comprehend.

Starting this autumn, that same information will read: "People often forget things or make mistakes in what they remember."

The article claims that juries have been confused for 70 years over this, and while I'm sure the legalese was thick at times, I have a suspicion that this was changed now because they were getting jurors who couldn't read too well. The state spent six years on this, hopefully in an effort to come up with simple phrases that mean exactly the same as the more complex phrases, but I'm skeptical. Legal jargon is often the butt of jokes, but there's a reason that the text is often dense and extremely, almost ridiculously, precise.

The example given in the article doesn't even seem right to me. I mean, to say that something is "uncommon" doesn't feel like the same thing as saying that it happens "often". The original description makes it clear that to forget something is more common than remembering it, but incorrectly, and that's lost in the simpler version. But, for all I know, the original distinction was incorrect...

Testing common sense

Suggested FCAT item:

Item: "Keeping a cobra as a pet is:"

A - "Dangerous to yourself"
B - "Dangerous to others"
C - "A really, really stupid idea"
D - "All of the above"

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is going to investigate, and if they don't explain to him just how dangerous it is to keep a "hot" snake as a pet, I'll fly down to Florida and do it myself.

I've bitched about the arrogance of such pet owners before, when some idiot got bitten on the lips trying to kiss a rattlesnake (the link to the original story is now dead). You can click on the "Want more?" link below to read my posting from Nov 20th, 2002, rescued now that Blogger's torched my old archives - don't worry, I have them all saved on my hard drive; I just haven't uploaded them onto this site yet.

As long as we're determined to test every child in the U.S., can we impart a bit of common-sense by making sure that they understand why the answer to the question, "It's okay to kiss your rattlesnake on the lips" is "False"?

What a moron. What a total idiot nutbag twit. As an amateur herpetologist, this guy sums up everything that drives me bananas about reptile ignorance. For starters, snakes are not ours to take from the wild, as this fellow did. There are hundreds of reputable breeders in the U.S. who sell only "captive-bred" animals - meaning, they started with wild stock way back when, but since then have selectively bred animals in captivity so as to satisfy the needs of pet owners without depleting the wild stock. There is absolutely NO reason to take a snake from the wild, and many reasons not to. Even if you're selfish enough not to care about the snake population in the wild, or about the stress on the snake of suddenly being taken from its natural environment and placed into an artificial one that may be sub-optimal, you should at least know that snakes can carry ticks, mites, and salmonella. Even a non-venomous snake can be detrimental to your health.

Taking snakes from the wild is dumb, but I'll give a free pass to every kid who ever brought home a harmless, pretty little garter snake. For a grown man to bring home a hot (i.e., venomous) snake from the wild is complete idiocy. I have zero respect for those who think it's "cool" to keep venomous snakes around. There are some serious collectors and breeders who are VERY careful with their snakes, but they are outnumbered by the bozos who consider a rattlesnake to be a status item.

Such people aren't a danger only to themselves. Southern Florida currently has a helicopter rescue team named Venom One that delivers a wide variety of anti-venom across Florida to victims of exotic poisonous snakes. Why was Venom One created? Because asshats with more money than sense thought it would be cool to import cobras and mambas and taipans to keep as pets. Snakes are escape artists, and exotic hot snakes that escape into Florida's swamps have plenty of heat, humidity, and warm-blooded critters to eat. And then they bite humans, and what do you know? Most U.S. hospitals don't keep antivenom on hand for snakes that aren't native to this country. Imagine that.

But this assratchet goes one step further. He doesn't wait for the wild hot snake he brought home to bite him - no, he has to prove to his friends that he can KISS IT. And the snakes kisses back.

If we teach kids nothing else in school, can we at least teach them that this is a really, really bad idea?

Butterflies, butterflies...

...in my tummy. Only 2 hours before I present. Eek! I think I'm ready but I'm always worried about what questions the audience might ask, and I came in on this project at the data analysis end. There may be questions that I can't answer (because I don't know) and questions I can't answer (because it's classified information) and of course, my boss is already headed back to the US, so he'll be no help at all.

Of course, even if the talk is a disaster, I can tell him it went well, and no one will be the wiser....

Wish me luck!

By the way...

In case I didn't make it clear earlier - I'm going to miss you guys something awful. Not that, you know, this blog has become an important part of my identity, and my social life, or anything (she says, while shyly twisting her hair and looking at the floor). It's just that, well, I am REALLY going to miss all of you. You don't know how happy it makes me to post something that I figure no one else will care about, and then I come back and there are two comments, or three, and a couple of emails, and then someone buys me a book off my Wish List.

And you're so CUTE when you disagree with one another in my comment sections. :)

Really, you guys are great (and I'm not just saying that because I'm unwinding with a massive Jack-&-Coke following a very hectic day). Don't go anywhere, okay? I'll be back by the 14th, at the latest.

Hee hee hee....

Thanks to Captain Yips for the cartoon.

Vacation, all I ever wanted...

Vacation, have to get away...

Unfortunately, a vacation is not exactly what I'm getting. I'll be away (and offline) from July 4th - 11th on a business trip. The meeting is for the annual gathering of Psychometric Society, and if you guessed that means a bunch of bearded, eccentric voodoo scientists who sit around cracking bad puns and statistics jokes while drinking too much, you're wrong - most of us are clean-shaven.

I'll be giving a presentation, which I've been stressing about for weeks, but I think I've gotten it cut down to the length it needs to be (20 minutes). I did a practice presentation here last week that was well-received, but we'll see what my colleagues outside of work think about it. There will also be plenty of mind-twisting talks to attend, on topics that can be just as dry and formula-choked as you'd imagine them to be.

On the other hand, the conference is in Italy. Sardinia, to be specific. The luxurious Le Meridien Chia Laguna resort and private beach, to be perfectly specific. Mid-90's during the day, low 70's at night, lots of sun, little precipitation, and this sort of scenery.

A mixed blessing, of sorts. I'm packing the power suit and the PowerPoint slides, but also the bathing suit (not a thong as shown on the Sardinia site, no way!) and the tropical print clothing (and the new Harry Potter book, for the ride over). I'm sure there will be a business center around somewhere, but I can't guarantee I'll get online for any length of time between now and July 12th. I do hope to be able to at least check my email once a day.

And when I return - photos! Funny stories about drunken psychometricians! And frantic efforts, on my part, to catch up after the longest hiatus this blog has ever known...

The Hogwarts Correspondence School

Blogger Steph of OneSixteenth has invented a Hogwarts Summer Correspondence School for her kids this summer:

We're going to do a trial run of the Hogwarts Summer Correspondence course. Just four weeks, I'm thinking, and if it goes well we'll do more next summer. I'm setting up lessons in Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, Potions and a special class in Basic Charms and Spells for Muggle Witches. I was going to do Astronomy, but then I looked at the night sky near our house. There's so much light pollution that the lessons would have to consist of "Go outside, and peer at the sky until you can find a star, any star ..."

I will post the lessons when I'm finished with them. This will be fun :) I just have to decide on which "Magical Creature" we're going to do. If we buy Griffin a snake, then we'll make snakes our lesson.

Oooh, snakes. Rock on, Steph. What a great idea.

(Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for the link).

McCloskey's ducklings

The Wall Street Journal has a charming and insightful obituary of children's book writer/illustrator Robert McCloskey, who died Monday at age 88. I didn't recognize his name, but recognized immediately the title of one of his best-known books, Make Way For Ducklings.

Writer Amy Finnery praises the late McCloskey, who was honored in his lifetime with multiple honoral degrees for his contributions to literature, for avoiding the preachy, the sappy, the depressing, and the sociological in his approach to children's writing:

In the pages of these classic works, in the expressive, monochrome drawings, there is no Big Sociological Message, forced sunniness or sentimentality, but rather the gentle but sharply observed depiction of children's--or ducklings'--dilemmas, regional landscapes and midcentury American cities.

The ducks' behavior is endowed with transcendent nuance, delightful to human children who recognize their own mothers in Mrs. Mallard. The mother duck puts her bill in the air and "walks along with an extra swing in her waddle" when a passerby admires her offspring. McCloskey wrote that Mrs. Mallard tells Mr. Mallard: " 'don't you worry, I know all about bringing up children.' And she did."

I remember this book, although I don't think I ever owned it. When I look at children's books today, so many of them seem haphazardly-drawn, or overly-ideological, or just plain bad. Reading the reviews on the Amazon website makes me want to buy a copy of Make Way for Ducklings and read it all over again.

I love the description here of McCloskey's preparation for creating his memorable mallards:

So that he could draw the ducks exactly, he bought four squawking mallards and took them home to his apartment. "The ducks had plenty to say - especially in the early morning. I spent the next weeks on my hands and knees, armed with a box of Kleenex and a sketchbook, following the ducks around the studio and observing them in the bathtub." Make Way For Ducklings was awarded the Caldecott Medal, given annually for the most distinguished American picture book for children, and has sold more than 2 million copies in hardcover and paperback.

And next time I go to Boston, I will be sure to go see the bronze statues of Ms. Mallard and her brood of ducklings. A similar (perhaps identical) set march in Novodevichy Park, Moscow; Former First Lady Barbara Bush gave them to Raisa Gorbachev as a gift to celebrate the signing of the START treaty.

The simple vision of one man from Hamilton, Ohio, immortalized forever in a park in Moscow as a sign of international goodwill between two world superpowers. Imagine that.

Another touching little tribute can be found here, by Redheaded Rambler Sheila.

Melbourne is mentioned in the Bible, right?

A new email is circulating the web, from a "librarian with question." A very, very stupid question - so stupid that this might be a hoax (if so, it's a very good one).

If it's valid - sheesh.

Subject: librarian with question
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 12:11:08 -0400

Thank you very much for your help.

Emphasis mine (and Tim's). I understand why both the student and the librarian are searching for these mysterious ancient educators who've impacted modern education - modern education sure hasn't "impacted" either one of them.

Here's a tip for that librarian (who I hope is not ever left in charge of any actual books) - avoid those pre-1788 tomes of Australian philosophy. They're likely to be a bit inaccurate.

*Whew*

The presentation is over, and I did a great job, according to the members of my audience (which included some serious bigwigs, including my boss, and my boss's boss). Thanks to all of you who sent helpful tips.

Now, it's time to PARTY - as much partying as possible, that is, given that we're all still at work for another four hours. But hey, at least we are ordering in pizza.

It's art, I tell you

Two distractions that have kept me sane, in-between bouts of wrestling with PowerPoint and obsessing over my talk for tomorrow:

Heathers - Ah, for the good old days, when a movie could be made featuring a sympathetic lead character who whips out a gun in the cafeteria and shoots the two most obnoxious jocks in school with blanks. He not only doesn't get expelled (or jailed), he also gets the girl - though he tries to off her in the end, as well. Every line is a classic.

The Outsiders - Ah, for the good, even older days, when greasers read Gone With The Wind and quoted Robert Frost.

Which is more memorable?

"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home."

or

"Well, they seem to have an open door policy for assholes though, don't they?"

Swamped and sleepy

I've been so busy today that I just now realized I didn't blog anything. I had meetings all morning, and very intense meetings at that. I was already tired, because I stayed up late last night getting together a presentation I'll be giving at work and at an international conference next month. I was going to continue working on it today after all the meetings, but had the distinct feeling that if I stayed at work, I would be dragooned into yet more meetings, so I came home to work.

Problem: The room where my computer is at home is not air-conditioned. I moved into this house less than two months ago, and so I didn't realize the extent of the problem until today. I think my computer is okay (and my python, who also lives in the room, happily appreciates the warmth), but the heat made me drowsy, and the air-conditioned bedroom beckoned me for a nap.

Problem: Mid-day naps, especially when I'm already sleep-deprived, result in a lot of very weird REM cycles. Normally the telemarketers who begin calling at 5 pm drive me nuts, but today I'm glad they woke me up. I'd begun by dreaming that I was an investigative reporter on the verge of proving a scandalous link between my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend and the Mob (hah), and had moved to a dream in which my current neighborhood was in fact the traditional Native American outpost of Philadelphia (eh?), and so my neighbors were reclaiming this ground by digging up the pavement and burying their dead there.

Like I said, I'm glad the telemarketer woke me up. I don't think I made much sense on the phone, though.

Anyway, I'm now hard at work on the presentation, but I hope to get some blogging done tonight as well, seeing as how I'll be in front of the computer for the next seven hours or so...

Tarot cards for Bloggers

Oh, this I like. I really, really like.

I don't think he's gotten to me, yet. Will "Edublogger" be a card? "Over-educated Blogger?" "Ridiculously specialized Blogger?" Remains to be seen...

(I really, really hope I don't come across as the "Newbie".)

Rain sucks

Oh, what a lovely weekend it's shaping up to be. We had planned to go to the Jersey Shore this weekend, but the weather report is for a high of 61, with rain. Lots of rain. Like we've had all month. Earlier this week I put in my garden a stone statue of a frog holding a water collection tube. When I went outside this morning, I discovered the frog had exchanged his tube for a giant golf umbrella. He's as sick of the rain as I am. I don't care if the Spanish word for rain is a lovely-sounding word; it still sucks.

I'm also tired of thinking about testing. My work this week included:
(a) handing in comments on a paper on computerized testing guidelines, only to discover later that I edited the wrong paper,
(b) revising a research paper in preparation for an upcoming conference, only to discover that policy decisions were made this week that completely change the nature of my conclusions, and
(c) literally dozens of hours worth of meetings, involving complicated scoring rubrics, mathematical models, and office politics. Most of which took place in a building where the air conditioning was broken.

My brain is dead.

So here's what I actually am thinking about now:

I just found out that a friend of mine was deployed to Iraq as part of a fire-fighting unit. He's in the 369th Eng Platoon, and I don't know how long he'll be out there. He's more than capable of handling any trouble, but I'm sending good wishes his way nonetheless. Hopefully the Iraqis are happy to see him, and they should be.

Right now, I'm lovin' the following:
My director's cut DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire.
The new CD by Evanescence.
The Decorated Page - a guide for illustrating my scrapbook/journal.
A new true crime book - Glensheen's Daughter - about a female mass murderer. Money, murder, madness - I love it.
The Reptile Exhibition at Philly's Academy of Natural Sciences. I loved the museum so much that I just applied to be a volunteer. If I can get a chance to work in their live animal exhibit, I'll be in heaven.

Oh, and my copy of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix shipped out from Amazon today! Wahoo! I'm actually going to be waiting until July 4th to start reading it....and I'll tell you why later.

Have a great weekend. Since the weather is so crappy, I'll probably be at the computer tomorrow, so check back for more postings.

X=rolls of duct tape, Y=girth of principal...

Students at a school in Rochester (NY) are stuck on math - and their principal is willing to be stuck for math. Nice to see an educator who puts his money where his mouth is - and his body where the duct tape is.

My reputation as a fashion plate precedes me....

Today, two different readers, Mike M. and Richard H., who often send me juicy testing-related news, both sent fashion-related news. Among my psychometric friends, I definitely have a reputation as a fashion plate, but I had no idea that my snazzy rep had spread to the blogosphere.

Anyway, Richard sent a link to this eighth-grade graduation in Tennesee, in which some students were barred from marching due to their attire. Too skimpy, you think? Perhaps too revealing? Nope - as the photos show, these kids were duded up beyond all belief, in snazzy suits and long white gowns. I personally think these outfits weren't entirely appropriate for kids so young, but then, I'm old-fashioned and don't believe in formal attire for K-8 kids, except as part of a wedding party. However, their outfits were by no means outrageous or disrespectful of the occasion. The principal who barred students from marching was dead wrong - and let's not even go into the "pimp" comments.

Besides, you want pimping? Go fling that allegation at whoever is convincing young girls to wear Playboy Bunny attire. That Tennessee principal should be thanking her lucky stars that her hopeful graduates weren't duded up in bunny earring and bunny shortshorts. Young girls these days are all about claiming "power" over their sexuality, you know, and want to make sure guys notice them. As one bunny fanatic says, "Once boys notice, they can get to know the real me" - assuming the type of guy attracted to a 16-year-old with the Playboy logo emblazoned on her chest would ever want to know the "real" girl inside.

An innovative new form of fundraising?

Or every student's worst nightmare?

You be the judge.

For those of you with teenagers...

Only a teenager could use a solid education to be this annoying...

Zits 06/01/06 by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

And now for something completely different...

The Onion's story about disadvantaged teens, caring social workers, and the bling-bling factor - "Troubled teens mock social worker's car".

Everybody have a good weekend. I'm outta here!