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):

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.