Retiring Overseas

I seriously considered giving up my job and getting a teaching job in an international school overseas, as a friend of mine did.  She could afford the hit to her California teacher retirement, I cannot--so I gave up on that dream. 

There's still the possibility of moving overseas *after* I retire.  I've looked into that for a couple years and the five cities mentioned in this article come up time after time in my readings:  Quito, Ecuador; Panama City, Panama; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Lisbon, Portugal.  I stopped in Lisbon on a cruise about a year and a half ago--nice place!

I've Done So Little This Week

It's been so nice!  It surprises people, especially those who know me in person, to learn that I'm an introvert.  I need lots of alone time in order to recharge my batteries, and that's just what I've been able to do this week.  Put up my tree and some inside decorations yesterday evening, I'm all in the Christmas spirit!

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Now that the left completely controls academia, they have become what they claimed to be against:

December’s Notices of the American Mathematical Society contains a surprising column on Page 4, given that mathematicians have not been on the front lines of debates about diversity and campus speech.

The column, by Abigail Thompson, chair of math at the University of California, Davis, and one of the society’s vice presidents, says that today’s diversity statements are like the political litmus tests of the McCarthy era.

“In 1950 the Regents of the University of California required all UC faculty to sign a statement asserting that ‘I am not a member of, nor do I support any party or organization that believes in, advocates, or teaches the overthrow of the United States Government, by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional means, that I am not a member of the Communist Party,’” Thompson says. Those who refused to sign were fired.

Now, “Faculty at universities across the country are facing an echo of the loyalty oath, a mandatory ‘Diversity Statement’ for job applicants.”

The author identifies such statements as obvious litmus tests.  Notice that the column was written by a mathematician, not someone in the social sciences. 

No, It Doesn't Add Up

Rather than teaching math (which is haaaaaard), there are some on the left who think we should abandon math and teach social justice instead.  After all, if everything in education is political, we should infuse politics into every corner of our curriculum.  A contributor to Forbes certainly sees it that way:

According to math scores in the 2019 nation’s report card, only 41% of 4th graders are proficient in math, and only 34% of 8th graders are. These numbers, which have not moved much since 2009 are dismal on their surface. Digging deeper, when these results are broken out by race and ethnicity, only 20% of Black and 26% of Hispanic students are proficient. These damning results show that something is clearly something wrong with math education in the United States.

Fortunately, initiatives like Seattle Public Schools’ ethnic studies framework for math might very well be part of the solution. As Daniel T. Willingham recently noted in his piece, Math scares your child’s elementary school teacher – and that should frighten you, math competence has three important components: memorizing math facts, knowing algorithms to solve problems, and knowing why these algorithms work. Teachers must possess deep conceptual understanding of math topics to transfer this depth of understanding to students. But our students’ inherent sense of justice and fairness can be a powerful motivator to set this deeper learning into action. 

If elementary school teachers are not good math teachers, swapping math for so-called social justice isn't going to make anyone any better at math.  It might make some incompetents feel better about themselves, because teaching racial hatred is certainly easier than teaching multiplication, fractions, decimals, and percents, but it's not going to do any good for students.

The fairness and justice aspect of so-called “woke math” is not about indoctrination. It’s about tapping into the same inherent sense of human curiosity that compels us to binge-watch shows like Law and Order, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and whatever dark murder mystery is trending on Netflix nowadays. I can learn about the radius of a circle and do typical classroom activities where I’m finding the circumference of a jar. Or, my teachers can use the concept of a radius to have me think about my proximity to a grocery store where healthy food options are available to help me understand the concept of food deserts.  

Anyone who thinks that such instruction isn't about indoctrination is either a liar or a fool.  There is no middle ground there.  If you think there wouldn't be an extreme bias to the left in such "instruction", imagine the howls and shrieks if I were to imbue my own instruction with slightly right-leaning data.  No, we can't have any "inherent sense of justice and fairness" if it doesn't comport with left-wing dogma, can we?  And the author even provides an example:

Even the student who is not a “math person” can be compelled to care very deeply about underlying conceptual foundations of ratio and proportions when we apply it to the equity questions regarding the electoral college and the Founding Fathers’ grand compromise of giving every state equal representation in the United States Senate. 

I'm not convinced that elementary school students are truly capable of the critical thinking that is inherent in the concept of "food deserts", the Connecticut Compromise, or the electoral college.  If they are, they seem to lose that capacity by the time they get to high school, as I can attest from experience with my own students.  This plan is absolutely intended to be left-wing indoctrination and nothing else.

Math instruction should be about learning math.  If you have to ponder the existence of food deserts, representation in the Senate, etc., in school, social studies classes are the appropriate venue.

The Union Mentality Is The Mindset of Children

I resigned my union membership in 2005.  They didn't have to, but the local union did the right thing and allowed me to participate in contract votes.  There was one hiccup, but it was resolved quickly and amicably.

Times have changed.  Yesterday I was told that I had been allowed to vote on contracts because I had been an agency fee payer.  In the post-Janus world, though, I don't pay a fee, so I don't get to vote on my contract.  Here's the email exchange that took place.  I'm tentatively removing identifying information:

Mr. Miller,

Thank you for your phone call inquiry yesterday regarding not being able to vote on the contract.

Our records indicate that you are currently a non-member of this association. As you may or may not be aware, Section IV (MEMBERSHIP) Sub-section 2(b) (RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND OBLIGATIONS) of the xxx by-laws states that only “active members” are able to vote. We would be happy to enroll you today and provide you the opportunity to vote on the contract.

If you would like to become a member, I would be happy to bring out a form so that you can sign-up to become a member. I can get the form to you anytime today, but if you would like to vote, it would need to be prior to 4pm. Once you have signed-up as a member, we will get you a temporary password so that you can vote on the contract. If you prefer, I can also bring you a paper ballot that you can place in a sealed envelope and I can provide that sealed envelope to the Elections Chair, xxx. He will include all paper votes into the final numbers.

Dr. xxx

Associate Executive Director, (local union)




xxx,

Thank you for your reply.

This is clearly a change, as I have always been able to vote on contractual matters since the days of (long-since former union president), when I left (local union). Clearly I don’t vote on strictly union matters, e.g. union reps and officers, but this change on contract voting is disconcerting.

When did the Executive Board make the change?

Darren





Darren,

I spoke with President xxx and the previous email expresses the view of the elected officers of (local union).

I would like to note that we have made no changes to the by-laws. However, the recent Supreme Court ruling has impacted bargaining unit members’ rights related to dues paying status.

As I mentioned in my earlier email, our by-laws contain guidelines on membership and voting. For your own edification the section reads:

2. RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND OBLIGATIONS (pg2):

a. Membership may be granted upon payment of annual (local union)/CTA/NEA dues through payroll deduction or cash appropriate to the class of membership and completion of a membership application.

b. The right to vote and to hold elective office or appointive position shall be limited to Active members.

Because of the loss of Agency Fee, some who had previously been granted voting rights as a result of their dues contribution, no longer qualify for those voting rights if they no longer pay dues.

As you may be aware, the Supreme Court ruled that membership can only be established through a voluntary process and cannot be compelled of any person not wishing to be a member.

I will reiterate my offer to come out to (your school) and bring you a membership form if you would like to sign-up. If we do that prior to 4pm, we will make sure that you have the opportunity to vote.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need clarification.




I’d be happy to join (local union).

I will not, however, be happy to join CTA and NEA. At all. They are the reason I canceled my membership. Please let me know when the unified dues structure is abolished so I can become a member of (local union) again.

Darren

It's unjust that they're allowed to negotiate my contract and I have no say in it at all.  The unionistas will say, Just join the union if you want to vote!  To which I reply, why should I have to?  Unions get special privileges--for example, getting to negotiate my contract!  In the Janus case the Supreme Court ruled that such privileges necessitate fair representation:

Exclusive representation of all the employees in a unit and the exaction of agency fees are not inextricably linked...

[A]voiding “the risk of ‘free riders,’ ” Abood, supra, at 224, is not a compelling state interest. Free-rider “arguments . . . are generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections,” Knox, su-pra, at 311, and the statutory requirement that unions represent members and nonmembers alike does not justify different treatment.As is evident in non-agency-fee jurisdictions, unions are quite willing to represent nonmembers in the absence of agency fees. And their duty of fair representation is a necessary concomitant of the authority that a union seeks when it chooses to be the exclusive representative.  (Boldface mine--Darren)

How can they represent me if they don't allow me to vote?

The above quote is from the syllabus, the following comes from the opinion of the Court:

First, it is simply not true that unions will refuse to serve as the exclusive representative of all employees in the unit if they are not given agency fees. As noted, un­ions represent millions of public employees in jurisdictions that do not permit agency fees. No union is ever com­pelled to seek that designation. On the contrary, designa­tion as exclusive representative is avidly sought.5 Why is this so?  

Even without agency fees, designation as the exclusive representative confers many benefits. As noted, that status gives the union a privileged place in negotiations over wages, benefits, and working conditions. See §315/6(c). Not only is the union given the exclusive right to speak for all the employees in collective bargaining, but the employer is required by state law to listen to and to bargain in good faith with only that union. §315/7. Des­ignation as exclusive representative thus “results in a tremendous increase in the power” of the union. American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U. S. 382, 401 (1950).

 In addition, a union designated as exclusive representa­tive is often granted special privileges, such as obtaining information about employees, see §315/6(c), and having dues and fees deducted directly from employee wages, §§315/6(e)–(f). The collective-bargaining agreement in this case guarantees a long list of additional privileges. See App. 138–143. 

These benefits greatly outweigh any extra burden im­posed by the duty of providing fair representation for nonmembers. What this duty entails, in simple terms, is an obligation not to “act solely in the interests of [the union’s] own members.”

My local union wants the authority and power that comes with being the sole representative, but doesn't want to provide the representation.  They've taken a sharp turn for the worse.

Update, 11/24/19:  I've written about union privileges and responsibilities before.

An Abuse Of Office

Why shouldn't Gruesome Newsom have filed this case, right, lefties?  It's not like he had to spend his own money on it, only to be shot down 7-0 in the state Supreme Court:

President Donald Trump won’t have to release his tax returns to get on California’s 2020 primary ballot following a unanimous ruling from the state Supreme Court on Thursday that invalidated a new state law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 27 into law in July to compel presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to get on California’s primary ballot. Jessica Patterson, chairwoman of the Republican Party then sued the state.

The law was unconstitutional on its face, but why not waste the taxpayers' money on his own little vanity project?

Jesse Melgar, a spokesman for Newsom, said in a statement that the governor will “continue to fight against the self-dealing, conflicts of interest and blatant corruption that have pervaded the Trump presidency"...

Newsom should look in the mirror.

“We’ve searched the record to determine whether or not the California Legislature even considered the California constitution in the drafting of SB 27. We didn’t find anything. Did you?” asked Chief Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye.

The justices also highlighted arguments former Gov. Jerry Brown articulated when he vetoed a similar bill in 2017, saying such a proposal could set a “slippery slope precedent.”

When Jerry Brown is your voice of reason, you're in very bad shape indeed.

Financial Literacy

This is my first year teaching "financial math", and this semester we've focused on "financial literacy".  Over the past couple days my students have learned the differences between stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, and today we talked about stock market indices (DJIA, S&P 500) and index funds.  The previous couple weeks we spent talking about credit (including credit cards) and debt.

Financial Math is one of the most practical courses we teach at school.  I'm not saying it should be a graduation requirement, but I'm trying to make the course into one that students want to sign up for rather than the low-level dumping ground it's been for students who need one more math course in order to graduate.

My principal recognizes how important such knowledge is, and a couple years ago he brought in a guest speaker to address the senior class about such things.  This guy did not know how to talk to teenagers, did not know how to tailor his talk to his audience, did not know how to make his talk interesting.  I'm an adult, and listening to this talk was difficult for me.

A couple days ago at lunch I was talking about what I'm teaching in class, and someone brought up that assembly from two years ago.  One of our social science teachers said, "You and I should give that talk.  We'd be so much better at it."  And we would.

I'm thinking of proposing that to our principal.  Two speakers, playing off one another, addressing such things as budgeting, credit, and debt.  Sure, it would only be an hour or two, but I have no doubt we could make it engaging.

My guess is it would be more useful, and more interesting, than some of the other talks that are given to our seniors.

College Entrance Exams

In general I support objective tests, but the devil is in the details.  I don't really like AP, for example, because I believe AP content is too narrow in the classes about which I know.  If this article is right about the ACT and SAT, I'll support their use even less, too:

Since college preparedness exams became standard, education has become woefully uninspired. Students graduate with the basics of reading and writing under their belt but have engaged little with some of the most crucial aspects of education. Students read too little of the conversations and works that have informed some of the most impactful intellectual and social developments in history.

That’s because most states now abide by Common Core, a set of K-12 educational standards in math and English incentivized by federal grants. It’s a boxed-in method of teaching that requires teachers, by 8th grade, to prioritize functional texts in exposition over works of literature. By the twelfth grade, 70 percent of texts read in English classes must be informational in nature. So, then, the literary works that require deep reading and the development of abstract thought fall to the wayside in favor of the simplistic and mundane. This is just one example of Common Core’s overall emphasis of skills training over meaningful content—a system that discourages creativity and hampers student desire to be a life-long learner.

The SAT and Common Core standards have the same pedigree: David Coleman, president of the College Board, re-vamped the SAT in an effort to align the test with Common Core, telling the Institute for Learning that “teachers will teach towards the test. There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that.” Of course, these tests, like the curriculum they reflect, facilitate neither genuine academic growth nor the understanding of human virtue. The organization behind the ACT also publicly supported Common Core standards when the initiative began. But this testing/standards relationship really only stunts student learning.

Read the whole thing. What do you think?

If We Judged Govt Programs By Their Actual Outcomes Rather Than Their Wish-For Outcomes....

Why does no one seem to care?  Is it because Common Core was pushed by Saint Barack's administration?  Had any Republican been so instrumental in this, people would (justifiably) be marching with pitchforks:

At the topline, we have seen a story of decline ever since 2013. My fear is that this is not a coincidence. From 2013 onward, the Common Core took firm root in most states and we saw a sea change in school discipline and an apparent explosion of tablets and laptops in the classroom. I’ve grown increasingly concerned that the education reform movement has hurt the students it is trying to help, especially students of color.

Of course, NAEP can’t confirm this hypothesis. It can tell us what is happening but not why.

But I wanted to know more about what was happening, focusing on African American achievement in districts and states from 2013–2019, and what I found, as displayed in table 1, seems well worth ringing an alarm about...

At the state level, the larger sample sizes allowed me to look into African American achievement by gender. I found that, at the national level and in many states, African American males saw greater losses than African American females. Given this alarming pattern—and that, as Fordham’s Erika Sanzi has lamented, boys are often left out of public policy conversations—I decided to display the data in table 2 for African American males from 2013 to 2019...

Folks who claimed that the Common Core, discipline reform, and more tablets and laptops would lead to significant gains for African American students have, at this point, seen their hypotheses fairly well falsified...  (boldface mine--Darren)

The ghastly data on African American achievement should have raised major alarm bells. But in a movement ostensibly dedicated to racial equity, it seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.

A New Discovery About Matrices

The first time I studied linear algebra was when I was an exchange cadet at the Air Force Academy.  That was the only course in all of my college education in which everyone in the course failed.  Well, I earned a low 60-something percent, but since mine was the highest grade in the class, I got an A.  Yay me.

Not having learned anything in that course, and being petrified of linear algebra because of it (and perhaps because over 25 years had since passed), I convinced my advisor to let me retake the course in my master's program.  It was in that course that I learned a little bit about eigenvalues and eigenvectors, interesting components in the study of matrices.  It was when meeting a former student a few years ago, and telling him about what little we teach about matrices in pre-calculus class, that I learned from him about a YouTube video that explained eigenvalues.  That was when all those calculations I'd done made actual sense!

Physicists have now added to our understanding eigenvalues and eigenvectors:

The physicists — Stephen Parke of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Xining Zhang of the University of Chicago and Peter Denton of Brookhaven National Laboratory — had arrived at the mathematical identity about two months earlier while grappling with the strange behavior of particles called neutrinos.

They’d noticed that hard-to-compute terms called “eigenvectors,” describing, in this case, the ways that neutrinos propagate through matter, were equal to combinations of terms called “eigenvalues,” which are far easier to compute. Moreover, they realized that the relationship between eigenvectors and eigenvalues — ubiquitous objects in math, physics and engineering that have been studied since the 18th century — seemed to hold more generally.

Although the physicists could hardly believe they’d discovered a new fact about such bedrock math, they couldn’t find the relationship in any books or papers. So they took a chance and contacted Tao, despite a note on his website warning against such entreaties.

“To our surprise, he replied in under two hours saying he’d never seen this before,” Parke said. Tao’s reply also included three independent proofs of the identity.

A week and a half later, the physicists and Tao, whom Parke called “a fire hose of mathematics,” posted a paper online reporting the new formula. Their paper is now under review by Communications in Mathematical Physics. In a separate paper submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics, Denton, Parke and Zhang used the formula to streamline the equations governing neutrinos.

Experts say that more applications might arise, since so many problems involve calculating eigenvectors and eigenvalues. “This is of really broad applicability,” said John Beacom, a particle physicist at Ohio State University. “Who knows what doors it will open"...

Matrices do this by changing an object’s “vectors” — mathematical arrows that point to each physical location in an object. A matrix’s eigenvectors — “own vectors” in German — are those vectors that stay aligned in the same direction when the matrix is applied. Take, for example, the matrix that rotates things by 90 degrees around the x-axis: The eigenvectors lie along the x-axis itself, since points falling along this line don’t rotate, even as everything rotates around them.

A related matrix might rotate objects around the x-axis and also shrink them in half. How much a matrix stretches or squeezes its eigenvectors is given by the corresponding eigenvalue — in this case, ½. (If an eigenvector doesn’t change at all, the eigenvalue is 1.)

Eigenvectors and eigenvalues are independent, and normally they must be calculated separately starting from the rows and columns of the matrix itself. College students learn how to do this for simple matrices. But the new formula differs from existing methods. “What is remarkable about this identity is that at no point do you ever actually need to know any of the entries of the matrix to work out anything,” said Tao.

So cool.

Wind Turbines--Landfill Disaster

What good is wind power here in California?  When the wind blows, they shut the power off.

But what about the rest of the country?  Isn't wind the cleanest, least polluting form of energy generation there is, free of adverse effects?  Uh, no:

But the upgrades for Iowa’s growing wind industry, which is already among the nation’s largest, are creating some unexpected challenges.

MidAmerican’s retired blades, destined for the Butler County Landfill near David City, Nebraska, about 130 miles away, are among hundreds that will land in dumps across Iowa and the nation. Critics of wind energy say the blades’ march to a landfill weakens the industry’s claim it’s an environmentally friendly source of energy.

“This clean, green energy is not so clean and not so green,” says Julie Kuntz, who opposes a Worth County wind project. “It’s just more waste going in our landfills"...

He acknowledges, though, that disposing of the blades is a challenge. Wind energy generation, now topping 100 gigawatts nationally, will create 1 million tons of fiberglass and other composite waste, said Laird, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

“The scale of the issue is quite large,” said Laird, whose group is working to develop new blade materials that will enable reuse. “It’s quite a bit of material. And it’s a larger sustainability issue. We would like everything that’s manufactured to be reusable or recyclable"...

Landfill operators thought the composite blades, cut in 40-foot or larger sections, could be readily crushed and compacted. “But blades are so strong — because they need to be strong to do their job — they just don’t break,” said Amie Davidson, an Iowa Department of Natural Resources solid waste supervisor.

“Sometimes pieces fly off and damage equipment” in the compacting process, she said. “Landfills are really struggling to manage them, and they just decide they can’t accept them.”

So far, only one facility in north Iowa is taking the blades, while other landfills are assessing whether they will.

Bill Rowland, president of the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations, said he’s unsure “we as a society” considered what would happen to the blades as older turbines are repowered.

“There wasn’t a plan in place to say, ‘How are we going to recycle these?’ ‘How are we going to reduce the impact on landfills?’” said Rowland, director of the Landfill of North Iowa near Clear Lake...

The difficulty in reusing blades adds to the complaints opponents make against wind energy. Some who live near the turbines complain that low-frequency noise and light flickering from the blades make them ill. And the spinning blades can kill migrating birds and bats.

Blade disposal is “just one of many factors we’re concerned about,” said Kuntz, the Worth County wind farm opponent.

Expensive boondoggles designed solely to line someone's pockets.

Buying The Rope That Will Hang Them

When newspeople don't value the 1st Amendment...:

Suppose you’re the editorial-page editor of a college newspaper, contemplating the big news on campus: protesters have silenced an invited speaker and gone on a violent rampage. Should you, as a journalist whose profession depends on the First Amendment, write an editorial reaffirming the right to free speech?

If that seems like a no-brainer, you’re behind the times. The question stumped the staff of the Middlebury Campus after protesters silenced conservative social thinker Charles Murray and injured the professor who’d invited him. The prospect of taking a stand on the First Amendment was so daunting that the paper dispensed with its usual weekly editorial, devoting the space instead to a range of opinions from others—most of whom defended the protesters. When a larger and more violent mob at the University of California at Berkeley prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus, students at the Daily Californian did write a forceful editorial—but not in favor of his right to speak. Instead, they reviled Yiannopoulos and denounced those who “invited chaos” by offering a platform to “someone who never belonged here.”

Free speech is no longer sacred among young journalists who have absorbed the campus lessons about “hate speech”—defined more and more broadly—and they’re breaking long-standing taboos as they bring “cancel culture” into professional newsrooms. They’re not yet in charge, but many of their editors are reacting like beleaguered college presidents, terrified of seeming insufficiently “woke.” Most professional journalists, young and old, still pay lip service to the First Amendment, and they certainly believe that it protects their work, but they’re increasingly eager for others to be “de-platformed” or “no-platformed,” as today’s censors like to put it—effectively silenced.

These mostly younger progressive journalists lead campaigns to get conservative journalists fired, banned from Twitter, and “de-monetized” on YouTube. They don’t burn books, but they’ve successfully pressured Amazon to stop selling titles that they deem offensive. They encourage advertising boycotts designed to put ideological rivals out of business. They’re loath to report forthrightly on left-wing censorship and violence, even when fellow journalists get attacked. They equate conservatives’ speech with violence and rationalize leftists’ actual violence as . . . speech.

It’s a strange new world for those who remember liberal journalists like Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice writer who stood with the ACLU in defending the free-speech rights of Nazis, Klansmen, and others whose views he deplored—or who recall the days when the Columbia Journalism Review stood as an unswerving advocate for press freedom. 

Read the whole thing.

The 4th Amendment

I agree with this ruling:

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Border Patrol agents need “reasonable suspicion” before they can search international travelers’ electronic devices at airports or other U.S. ports of entry, delivering a big win to civil rights activists.

Federal Judge Denise Casper of the District Court of Massachusetts ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials must have a specific reason for searching an individual’s smartphone, laptop, or other electronic devices, according to a 48-page decision...

The two agencies, which operate under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, argued that such searches were necessary as they can lead to successful “fishing” expeditions — leading to apprehensions of child pornography or other illicit material from those attempting to enter the U.S.

Fishing expeditions cannot pass constitutional muster, and Judge Casper ruled correctly.

Having said that, I'm left to wonder under what constitutional authority Customs can search suitcases at airports--or my travel trailer at ports of entry.  From a 4th Amendment standpoint, why can my suitcase (or trailer) be rummaged through but not my phone?

I Care About As Much As My District Seems To

I received the following as an attachment to an email today:

Ignore for a moment the robotic tone of the message and the email it came with.  Does anyone in their right mind think that saying it's mandatory that I read all those policies (each year) is going to get me to read them?  Does this reading look like a great Thursday night at home? 

You can argue that I should know some of the contents of, or even just about the existence of, some of them, but really, Guidelines For Hazardous Ozone Episodes?  Does anyone really read these, except when they need to?

This is one of the things that frustrates me about my current employer.  My time, my competence, these are of no value to them.  Darren, take your time and read all these policies!  Oh, and let's not forget all the "important" trainings that I have to find time for--they're all online trainings.  They must be really important!  The 45 minutes I spent on the sexual harassment training online was oh so valuable (not).  At least I scored 100% on the sexual harassment training, so I am an expert in sexual harassment.  I know how to do it perfectly!

What frustrates me is they say something is important, but they don't treat it as important.  I'm supposed to treat it as important, but for the suits, these emails and trainings are just checking off a box.  Want to train me in something?  Pay me for the training.  My time is valuable.  Don't just tell me to find time in my work day to fit this in, I don't sit around on Facebook all day while students crank out worksheets.  I teach, often bell-to-bell.  And I conduct at least one formal assessment in each class each week.  And I grade those papers and get them back to students with a quickness so they can take advantage of the feedback I offer.  Colleagues and students both know I'm anything but a slacker in the classroom.

Our district had planned a (voluntary) training day this week.  It was canceled.  I'm not complaining about a 4-day weekend for Veteran's Day, but they could have gotten a lot of this training out of the way on that day and paid me for my time rather than expect me to stuff 10 more pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag.  Such training would have been better than whatever "social justice" or "equity" training they were considering.

Rejecting Diversity and Equity

This article is exceedingly logical--which is why lefties will never even hear of it.

Here is the argument against so-called diversity:

The theory driving diversity pursuits encourages us to value certain immutable characteristics over others. This is troubling for the following reasons:

1. Benefiting an individual at the non-consensual expense of another individual is inherently immoral.
2. Valuing one individual over another on the basis of race, gender or other immutable characteristics is inherently immoral.
3. Valuing diversity of immutable characteristics means valuing some individuals over others on that basis.
4. Crafting selection criteria that ensure diversity of immutable characteristics necessitates harming one group of individuals at the expense of another group on that basis.

Points one and two are basic moral principles. Points three and four are the logical conclusions of pursuing diversity as a value in itself.

Here is the argument against so-called equity:

If selection criteria are designed to promote equity, some individuals must benefit at the expense of others, on the basis of their immutable characteristics. Given a finite number of positions, this is a mathematically necessary and indefensible consequence.

Read the whole thing.

Veterans Day

It started as Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I--which until that time had been the bloodiest war in human history.  Thus we get this video from the British Army:



Coincidentally enough, I recently purchased this movie--only $15 at Target.  The "Making Of" featurette was as interesting as the movie itself.

Two wars later, President Eisenhower signed a law changing Armistice Day to Veteran's Day.  The holiday is to honor all veterans, Memorial Day in May is to honor those who died.

I recently read about the 1946 movie The Best Years of Our Lives, about 3 World War 2 servicemen who return home and have some difficulties adjusting.  Watched it Saturday night.  It was much more realistic than other movies of the time and addressed themes of alienation, of trying to reintegrate into society, of PTSD, of burying problems in alcohol.  It should be shown every Veterans Day.

For years my mother, a retired Army Reserve Sergeant Major, and I have gone to Applebee's on Veteran's Day.  This year she's in Cancun.  Not sure if I'll go to Applebee's or somewhere else, or if I'll go anywhere at all--but here's a list of restaurants offering free and discounted meals to veterans today.

You Are To Be Silent

Much like "OK Boomer" is nothing more than a comment designed to shut down discussion, so is mention of "privilege":

In an effort to encourage dialogue, the president of Skidmore recently invited a scholar named Fred Lawrence to give a lunchtime lecture to faculty and staff. As author of a book called Punishing Hate and the secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest honor society, Lawrence seemed suited to offer advice about the troubles we’d been going through on campus. How could we better differentiate between offenses serious enough to warrant concern, and the more minor slips or unintentional derogations sometimes called “microaggressions”?

“To be unable to tell the difference between kicking a dog and accidentally tripping over one is to have little hope of successfully navigating life on a college campus,” Lawrence said, in a talk that was mild and notably free of polemic.

The first faculty member to raise a hand after the lecture asked Lawrence whether he was aware of the privilege he had exercised in addressing us. She spoke with conviction, and suggested that Lawrence had taken advantage of his august position by daring to offer his advice. Lawrence replied with courtesy, conceding that, like everyone else assembled, he was of course the beneficiary of several kinds of “privilege”, and would try to be alert to them.

Though nothing further came of this exchange, it seemed clear that “privilege” had been invoked as a noise word to distract from the substance of Lawrence’s remarks and from his suggestion that some of us had failed to make the elementary distinction he had called to our attention. More, the “privilege” charge had been leveled with the expectation that he was guilty – not because of anything particular he had said, but because he was a white male.

Yep.

Of course there really is such a thing as “privilege”, and of course it is distributed unequally in any society. You’d have to be a fool to deny that whiteness has long been an advantage, however little some white people believe that their own whiteness has given them what others lack. Can anyone doubt that privilege is a real and legitimate issue when certain groups in a society enjoy ready access to good healthcare and schooling when others do not? There was a time, not so long ago, when to speak of privilege was to identify forms of injustice that decent people wished to do something about.

But you’d also have to be a fool to deny that the idea of privilege has been weaponized in contemporary discourse, often by people attempting to seize rhetorical advantage. The privilege call-outs increasingly common in the culture entail a readiness to rebuke people simply because their gender, ethnicity or rank makes them an apt target for shaming and condemnation. The charge of “privilege” is usually directed at its targets not with the prospect of enlisting them in some plausible action to combat injustice but instead to signal the accuser’s membership in the party of the virtuous. Accusations of “privilege” have become a form of oneupsmanship, and a charge against which there is no real defense.

Read the whole thing.

The Day The Wall Came Down

Thirty years ago today the Berlin Wall came down.  Do you remember that night?  I do.

In this post I talk about what it was like to grow up and live in the Cold War, and how I ended up with a piece of the Berlin Wall.

Have you ever seen The Lives of Others?  It's about a Stasi agent who surveilled a playwright in East Germany.  Parts of it are dry, but from what I've read I have no doubt that it accurately describes life in a real police state.  It's sickening.

This morning I read this:

Thirty years later, Germany is reunified, a powerhouse country once again, but the story is not over. East Germans are still seeking answers for some of the bad things that happened to them. The Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic — commonly called the Stasi Archives — is open to the public. But in the frantic final days of the regime, the secret police began tearing up files. The public moved on them, blocking further sabotage but the Stasi managed to fill 17,000 bags with shreds of paper.

The Germans are putting them all back together. They want all who lived in former East Germany to be able to find out exactly what had been done to them.

Do you want more government?  That's what happens when you get more government.

Ukraine-gate

I'm Surprised It Took This Long

President Reagan gets some well-deserved recognition:

(AP) — The U.S. Embassy in Berlin unveiled a statue of Ronald Reagan on Friday at a site overlooking the location of the former president’s iconic speech imploring the Soviet Union to remove the Berlin Wall.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the inauguration of the work a “monumental moment” before helping remove the cover from the larger-than-life statue on the Embassy’s terrace, at eye-level with the top of the landmark Brandenburg Gate.

Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall....

Too bad it's only at our embassy and not at the actual site, especially since the current German Chancellor is from the former East Germany.

I loved President Reagan for his conservative ideals.  President Trump, no Reagan he, is succeeding at conservative actions.  I'm privileged to have lived in such times.

Try Mine

Our school is built in a typically Californian "ranch style", which means it's several one-story buildings spread out over a couple acres.  It's spread out enough that we have 3 different staff lounges.

Today in the staff lounge that I have frequented for the past 16+ years, we had a "try mine" at lunch.  Anyone else would call it a potluck, but in that lounge it's been a "try mine" since long before I got there.

Chow mein.  Ziti.  Chinese Chicken Salad.  Cornbread with corn kernels.  Potato soup.  Hot apple cider.  And my homemade apple sauce, made with some of the super sweet apples I picked up at Apple Hill this past weekend (even if I can't remember what the super sweet ones are called).  And so many desserts.

Talk about a feast!

My Favorite Topic To Teach

In pre-calculus?  Easy.  Matrices, including Gauss-Jordan Elimination as an algorithm for solving systems of linear equations.  Started that topic today.

If students' ability to learn were proportional to my excitement in teaching the material, they'd all be matrix gurus.

OK, Boomer

Much like "racist" was before it was overused to the point that it's lost its power to shock and awe, "OK, Boomer" is a retort that's sole purpose is merely to shut down the recipient.  I'm reminded of a comment mentioned by Jonathan Haidt:  That's a slur, not an argument.


(3:56-4:26)

The older I get, the more I find this to be true:  The reason the left celebrates a cult of youth is that young people tend to be ignorant and gullible, and that’s the kind of people who tend to buy the left’s bullshit.

Update, 11/20/19:

Update, 12/3/19:  This too:

The remark doesn’t bother me in the least; indeed, it gives me a good chuckle since it typically comes from someone who’s never paid a bill, raised a family, or planned and made sacrifices for retirement...

You want boomers and Gen Xers to take you seriously? You forget yours is the generation of grade inflation. Of minimal discipline, in and out of school. Of being carted around to sports and social functions by helicopter parents who cater to your every whim. In college, you run and cry to “bias response teams” when the slightest little thing offends you. Then you demand “safe spaces” and other measures to make you feel “welcome” and “wanted” …  like therapy animals, etc.

Impeachment

I thought this was pretty spot on so I'll quite the entirety of the Instapundit post.  It's all about the election--nullifying the last one or spoiling the next one.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Bureaucrats’ Hurt Feelings On Foreign Policy Don’t Justify Impeachment.

You see, it’s perfectly fine for Hillary Clinton to use her campaign funds to hire foreign national Christopher Steele to investigate Trump using (probably made-up) Russian sources. And there’s nothing wrong with the FBI using those partisan Steele smears to investigate the Obama administration’s political opponent.
Crossfire Hurricane, the official operational title for the investigation, employed assistance from the British government and an Australian diplomat. So the left believes there’s nothing wrong with asking a foreign government for help to investigate a domestic political opponent — so long as that opponent is Trump. After all, “Nobody is above the law, not even Donald Trump.” But if the shoe ends up on the other foot and Trump is the one investigating, it’s a constitutional crisis!
If you listen for more than a few minutes, you realize what’s really going on here is that Trump failed to prostrate himself before the “dedicated career professionals” who possess the “experience and expertise” that Trump supposedly lacks in foreign policy. Read your Constitution. Article II vests the power of foreign policy in the elected president. These “dedicated career professionals” aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution.
Maybe the framers made a drafting error in the Constitution? Or maybe we shouldn’t have a national impeachment circus over the hurt feelings of bureaucrats.

To me, the fuss indicates that this is over much more than “hurt feelings,” but actual criminal activity at risk of exposure.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”

$2 Bills

A lady at work was going through her mother's stuff and came across 45 $2 bills from the 50s and 60s.  Honestly, they aren't worth much more than face value, and she didn't know what to do with them, so I bought them from her for face value today.  I'm telling others at school they make great stocking stuffers for their kids, and cheap, too!

These notes have a red seal as opposed to today's green seal.

Apple Hill

Yesterday I made my annual fall pilgrimage up to Apple Hill, an area with several apple orchards.  October and November are the months to go, and I was able to pick up 10 pounds of Arkansas Black apples for me, as well as some Mutsu apples for my dad's wife.  Sure, I like Red Delicious and Honeycrisp as much as the next guy, but I can get those at the grocery store.  That I like the Arkansas Blacks is surprising, given that they're considered quite tart, but like them I do.

I also picked up an apple pie and some apple turnovers.  They maintain well in the freezer, and the turnovers are a treat throughout the year.

Tri-tip sammich lunch up there, life is good!

Two-fer

Not only do I get an extra hour of sleep tonight, but I've swapped the warm-weather Egyptian cotton bed sheets for the fleece.

Life is good :-)

Current Meme

Goliath Backs Down

Three months ago I wrote about a math curriculum company who sued a North Carolina parent for defamation for commenting negatively about the company's product:

I admit to knowing no specifics at all, but on its face this seems like Goliath trying to stomp David.

In an email Tuesday, Dillard said MVP's lawsuit "is an attempt at intimidation and bullying to silence my and other parents' free speech advocating for our children's education." Dillard's supporters have created a GoFundMe page to raise money for his defense against MVP.

I've long believed that we should have sort of a "loser pays" system in our courts.  If you sue someone and lose, and the judge/jury finds your case so weak that the most logical conclusion is that you attempted to use your lawsuit and the court's time as merely a means to harass the respondent, then the judge/jury would have the option of requiring you to pay the respondent's legal fees.  I have to believe that such a Sword of Damocles would stop many unnecessary lawsuits.  I don't know if this is one of those lawsuits or not--I hope to learn the outcome of this case. 

Case dropped:

This summer, a math curriculum provider made a surprising move against one of its most vocal parent critics—the company sued him for defamation and interference with business relations.

Now, after three months, the company has dropped its lawsuit.

Mathematics Vision Project, a Utah-based provider of open-source math curricula, and the parent, Blain Dillard, released a joint statement about the lawsuit's dismissal this week. Dillard also dismissed his countersuit against the company, which was for lawyers' fees and damages. 

After 3 years of using this program, the school district is going to evaluate its effectiveness:

Wake County schools is in its third year using Mathematics Vision Project. In response to formal parent complaints, the district has hired an external third party to conduct a review of the curriculum, which includes conducting parent experience surveys, the Raleigh News & Observer reports. 

Not a bad ending.