Friday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The Sandwich Islands.

Today's question is:
In what country is the Taj Mahal?

And mark your calendars this Sunday, when we begin a new Theme Week! Near, far, wherever you are, you'll be interested in the upcoming Theme Week!

Parent Conferences

I was in the counseling office today, and our secretary there remarked how I've been lucky lately--she's scheduling plenty of parent conferences, but none of them involved me and/or my students.

That doesn't mean I don't communicate with parents--I answer plenty of emails, and I have so much information available online. But it was funny the secretary made her comment today, because I had a meeting with a parent and student scheduled for right after school. The parent scheduled it with me directly, not through the counseling office, because I was the only teacher that needed to be involved.

My Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Watch this video of Senator Roland Burris (Idiot-IL) and then see if you like my proposed constitutional amendment:

"Any candidate for elected national office shall, in addition to the requirements identified in Articles I and II of this Constitution, be required to pass a written test about the Constitution. The tests and the answers each candidate provides for each question shall be released to the public no later than 60 days prior to the general election. Congress shall make all laws necessary and proper for carrying out this provision."

Then we need the laws governing the testing:

1. Test questions shall not be released, either to the public or to candidates, in advance.
2. Tests will be written by the Attorney General, and will be approved by both the majority and minority leaders in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The test must be approved by February 1st of each calendar year.
3. Tests shall be different each year, no more than 10 of the 25 questions can be the same in two consecutive years, and no more than 12 of the questions can be the same in any three consecutive years.
4. The test should be written at what is generally understood to be the level of an undergraduate constitutional law course.
5. Candidates will take the test at a location that will allow for the administration to be viewed by the public. Candidates will give the public 5 days' notice of the time and location they will take the test.
6. No resource materials are allowed by the candidate during the administration of the test.
7. No specific score is required for passing. The judgement of the voters will determine if a particular candidate is knowledgeable enough to represent them.

I know you can't legislate away stupid politicians, but wouldn't it be nice if a few of them were at least cognizant of the Constitution?

The Innocence Project, Chicago-Style Politics, the White House, and Unfriendly Press

I've written before about the Innocence Project, and the attempted stifling of its work by Cook County (Illinois) prosecutors. In a nutshell, the Innocence Project works to free prisoners it finds have been wrongly convicted; recently, Cook County prosecutors have subpoenaed not only the Project's records but also the academic grades of the students involved in the Project's work.

Cook County is home to Chicago; why should we expect anything less than thuggish behavior from its politicians--especially when one of those politicians occupies the White House?

The Cook County prosecutors' actions are certainly shameful. But they may be excused for thinking that attacks on media critics are, in today's political era, business as usual. Indeed, they need look no farther than the White House, whose occupant has sometimes styled himself the nation's chief media critic.

It is, after all, the Obama administration that declared that its critics at Fox News Channel are not real journalists, and that Fox is not a "legitimate news organization." In doing so—as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted with a reference to "brushback pitches" in baseball—the White House's goal was just the same as that of the prosecutors in the president's native city: To chill criticism, and to get journalists to think twice before stepping up to the plate...

The lesson from the White House is clear: "Real" journalists are those who aren't too critical of it. But America is not Cook County, and it's doubtful that Americans will tolerate the Chicago Way when it comes to journalism.

Let us hope.

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Ecuador.

Today's question is:
What name did Captain (James) Cook give to what we today call the Hawaiian Islands?

Get Your Money Back Before It's Too Late

November 15th is the deadline to request your money back from the California Teachers Association. This year the rebate is about 35%, which is the amount the state and national teachers unions admit to spending on activities not related to representation or collective bargaining (e.g., politics). To get this money back, though, you must resign from the union and request the money back. See this post for an overview and this page from the California Teachers Empowerment Network web site for more specifics. Sample letters are included at the 2nd link.

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
“A hundred and ten cornets”.

Today's question is:
The Galapagos Islands are a part of which country?

Carnival of Education

This week's is posted here and includes my post about the myriad tasks teachers perform in addition to actual teaching.

V

Just finished watching the series premiere of the new TV series called V, and my son and I were very impressed. We are apparently not the only ones:

Think about how easily this idea could have gone south. Apply too little creative thought, and this souped-up updating of NBC's much-loved 1983 miniseriescould easily have become the same cheesy, tacky rehash mess that NBC made of Knight Rider. Overthink the project, and you risk bleeding all the fun out of it and creating an overly dark lump like Bionic Woman.

Tonight, writer Scott Peters, whose The 4400 was one of TV's best recent alien-invasion dramas, hits all the right chords. He adds just enough modern media twists and political/sleeper-cell parallels to contemporize the story without drowning it in paranoia. The clothes and hair have changed, no doubt for the better, but the essentials are all in place – including, we can only hope, the visitors' legendary fondness for hamsters.

What he and ABC have landed on is a show in which the effects are good but not dominant, the characters are strong, and the story is (as it was) crystal clear. Space visitors have landed, and it's up to a few hardy souls to save a gullible world.

I never saw the original series, so I have no frame of reference with which to compare this update. Still, I liked the new Bionic Woman and I loved Sci Fi Channel's reimagined Battlestar Galactica, so perhaps I'm easy to please, but that doesn't take away at all from how much I enjoyed the first hour. Still, I am warned:

As with those Americans looking up at Anna's lovely face on that hovering spaceship HDTV, it would be unwise to be too easily seduced. V opens incredibly well. But so did the original miniseries, only to peter out as an open-ended show. Embrace the show, but keep your eyes open.

Update: To some people, the show is political commentary:

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.

The news media swoons in admiration -- one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: "Why don't you show some respect?!" The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: "Embracing change is never easy."

So, does that sound like anyone you know? Oh, wait -- did I mention the leader is secretly a totalitarian space lizard who's come here to eat us?

Welcome to ABC's "V," the most fascinating and bound to be the most controversial new show of the fall television season. Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it's also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president's supporters and delight his detractors.

Regarding V, I would like this cigar to be just a cigar.

Honor At Harvard

My, how times have changed:

Most Americans, however, might be hard-pressed to guess another Harvard distinction: the highest number of Medal of Honor recipients outside the service academies...

Harvard's prominence among Medal of Honor recipients is a recent discovery. It grew out of a reference by a speaker during a 2005 commissioning ceremony. The reference intrigued Paul Mawn '63, a retired Navy captain. With a little research, he unearthed the names of all 10—the most of any university outside the United States Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Altogether the Harvard list shows eight Army soldiers and two Marines. It includes the father-and-son recipients Teddy Roosevelt (for San Juan Hill) and Teddy Roosevelt II (for D-Day). Others range from the Army's Leonard Wood, who was awarded the medal for carrying dispatches through Apache territory in the 1880s, to Marine Sherrod Skinner, who threw himself on a grenade in October 1952 during the Korean War, saving the lives of two comrades.

Recognizing the valor of alumni like these men might seem easy. At many college campuses these days, however, questions about what history to honor and how to honor it often come wrapped in current controversies. It's no different at Harvard, where the ceremony for soldiers and Marines past inevitably draws comparisons to Harvard's modern relationship with a United States military that defends the freedoms which make the university's work possible.

In particular, this means the Reserve Officer Training Corps. ROTC was chucked off campus at the height of the Vietnam War and remains officially unrecognized today...

For more than 12 generations, Harvard has been well represented in the uniform of our nation. Let us commend the school for the decision to recognize those members of its family who have earned our nation's highest honor in this service. And let us hope for the day the university finds it within itself to recognize those Harvard men and women who, inspired by this example, now step forward to follow these heroes into that long Crimson line.

From the Wall Street Journal Online.

You Lie!

As if hoping to avoid the outcome, the White House issued a statement after the GOP win in Virginia saying the president was not watching election returns and would not be making any remarks on the results.

link

Principal Injured In Food Fight

A high school principal spent Thursday and Friday at home resting after suffering a head injury breaking up a food fight Wednesday in his campus cafeteria...

"The principal intervened and tried to stop some of the major fighting, and was pushed and fell and was hurt," (district board president) Leland said.

Commenters on the article quoted above add more interesting grist for the mill:

There is a total cover up going on here by the WUSD!
The food fight was staged to draw in the campus security and administration so some pre-planned racially and gang based jumps/fights could occur outside on the quad. It was hispanics vs asians. Go to YouTube and type in RCHS fights and you will find multiple videos taken of these pre-arranged fights. The WUSD is in serious trouble and in fact actively covering up these problems. These things have been going on for years there and especially since the new RCHS opened. There have been almost weekly staged and video recorded fights, food fights and fire alarms pulled.
The fact is that the kids are smarter then the administration and RCHS and other schools in the district are totally unsafe as a result. Is it any wonder why private and charter schools are thriving and the WUSD can't get their test scores up or get out of State mandated Program Improvement status? The complete lack of effective leadership in the WUSD is reason #1

I wonder how close to true this comment is?

Some commenters are taking a "kids will be kids" approach, but if such fights are a common occurrence, then the attitude of this commenter seems more in line with my views:

Our prisons are full of "kids will be kids" who received no discipline while growing up.

And why is there no discipline at this school? Partly because there's no discipline at home--because a bunch of mamby-pamby adults have decided that disciplining children is somehow damaging or abusive to them, so it must not be done (outside of the dreaded "time out"). We have a society of people who will protect their own children from any consequence of their actions. We have school districts for whom the coveted ADA (average daily attendance) dollar, not the safety or education of children, is the primary concern.

You couldn't pay me enough to be a school administrator. Too much responsibility and not enough authority. The job is not worth a donk on the head.

FoxNews Democrats

Democratic pundit Bob Beckel has been under contract with Fox News for six years. And in the midst of the White House war against the cable network, some of his liberal friends think that’s six years too many.

They invited him to lunch the other day for an intervention: Why is Beckel — a true-blue Democrat who worked for Robert F. Kennedy and ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign — giving comfort to the enemy?

Beckel’s response: “I talk to more persuadable voters in a month than anybody on MSNBC and CNN talks to in a year.”

link

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Ur, located in what is today Iraq.

Today's question is:
What immediately followed the 76 trombones which led the big parade?

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The Dead Sea.

Today's question is:
Abraham, recognized as a patriarch in each of the three major Western monotheistic religions, was born in which city?

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The Rhine. While the Danube did serve as a limit of the Empire, it separated Rome from more than just Germanic tribes.

Today's question is:
Into what body of water does the Jordan River empty?

Working On The Weekend

I know teachers who go into school to work on the weekend. While I grant that that's better than bringing work home with you, it's still something I can't bring myself to do. I'll stay after school to get work done, but won't give up my weekends.

What do other teachers think?

Environmental Heresies

The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate.

http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies.html

Poor Frank Rich, He Just Can't Help Himself

Frank Rich is a rabid leftie. Whether it's nature or nurture that made him that way, I cannot say, but he's definitely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Take yesterday's NYT opinion piece (please!), for example. Republicans who are conservative are Stalinists, according to Rich; he just can't understand why conservative Republicans wouldn't support a RINO for congress. After all, she's a moderate (your opinion may vary). Even though he states "one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly", there are plenty of "statistical measures" that show her as out of the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Scozzafava suspended her campaign yesterday because she was coming in 3rd place, behind both the Conservative Party candidate and the Democrat. At that time she freed her supporters to vote for whichever candidate they deemed best. I cannot find where I read that, and FoxNews reported something a little different:

Scozzafava's team pulled the plug on the campaign after viewing the Siena poll, sources told Fox News, adding that there was no pressure from the National Republican Congressional Committee or the Republican National Committee.

Ken Spain, a spokesman for the NRCC, said Scozzafava will now release her supporters to vote for (Conservative Party candidate) Hoffman.

Guess what's being reported today!

Since announcing the suspension of my campaign, I have thought long and hard about what is best for the people of this District, and how to answer your questions. This is not a decision that I have made lightly.

You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it's about the people of this District.

It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting (Democrat) Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

That, Frank Rich, is why Republicans and other conservatives couldn't support her. She's not a Republican or a conservative at all. She just wore the label so she could get elected in a strongly-Republican district. I'm glad she was exposed.

I hope the national Republican Party is watching.

And Frank Rich is a fool.

Update, 11/2/09: Talk about a sore loser (and she didn't even lose, she quit)--Scozzafava is doing robo-calls for Owens, the Democrat. The Republicans dodged a bullet this time.

Lefties are saying that Scozzafava shows there no room in the GOP for a moderate. I say it shows there's no room in the GOP for a Democrat. BTW, how welcome is Joe Lieberman, the Democrats' 2000 vice presidential candidate, in the Democratic Party?

High-tax California Not Worth It?

From an opinion piece in the LA Times, hardly a conservative mouthpiece:

In America's federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a "package deal" that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.

It's not surprising, then, that there's an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren't being delivered.

Before you dismiss the piece as conservative propaganda, I might suggest that you read the whole thing and then consider the closing paragraph:

You wouldn't know it from putting up with California's transportation and educational systems, but there actually is a principled, plausible argument to be made for the high-benefit/high-tax model. For the sake of both California and their own political ideals, its advocates ought to be leading the charge against every excess and inefficiency that deprives taxpayers of good value for their dollars. That won't happen until they stand up to their coalition partners by breaking their Faustian political bargain with California's self-serving governmental-industrial complex.

Some might ask: why do you stay in California? Why not just leave? While the question may be a good one, many who would ask such a question aren't truly interested in hearing the answer; rather, they try to use my staying as a foil against me personally. For starters, I don't think I should have to leave; rather, we here in California should clean up this mess. Second, I have personal/family reasons for staying.

But let's talk about the third reason. I benefit from this mess. About 1/4 of all union members in this state are teachers, and the CTA and its local unions have extorted some very nice retirement benefits for me--guaranteed by California taxpayers. (California teachers pay into a state teachers retirement system, not social security.) A few years ago Governor Schwarzenegger tried to reform public employee pay in a special election initiative and that initiative was soundly defeated by those very same taxpayers. Any economist will tell you that rational people will act in their own self-interest, and that is exactly what I am doing.

So while I might fantasize about moving back to Colorado, I'm staying right here. California will continue taking too much of my money today; I just hope I make it back with a cushy retirement.