"I'm never going to need math. I'm going into politics."
Boo-yah! If you don't know enough math you can't understand the references in this article:
Here's the secret to this: Politics runs in cycles. Like a sine wave - about half the time the wave is above the mid-point line; about half the time it is below the line...
We are inside of 300 days until the November elections. The Democratic sine wave is on the way down and without doing much of anything, because it is a zero sum game, Republicans are on the way up.
Not a glowing recommendation for the GOP, and deservedly so, but right now the Republicans are least worst. Here's to a good November!
Our yearbook at school has asked faculty members for their high school pictures. I knew that I had my freshman through junior pictures but do not have my senior portrait at all. I submitted scans of those first three years, which I'll post here for grins and giggles:
Freshman, 79-80
Sophomore, 80-81
Junior, 81-82
Can you guess the brand name of that last shirt? (Hint, think white pants with a tie-string in front.)
Update, 9/24/22: Here we are, more than a dozen and a half years later, and while looking for something else I came across a wallet size picture of my senior portrait:
Kirkwood (Mo.) High senior basketball player David "Chubbs" Stillman had a game he will remember forever on Monday night.
And it was all by design.
Stillman, who is a special needs student at Kirkwood and has been the team's manager since his freshman year, suited up for his high school - and scored six points.
"This night was planned to give back to Chubbs for all he has given us the past four years," Kirkwood coach Bill Gunn said. "He made the night special."
Read that story and you'll encounter a lot of classy people in Kirkwood, Mo.
Arrested and suspended for one day for wearing a “Nobama” shirt outside a pre-election speech by Michelle Obama in his high school gym, a Colorado high school student has won a s$4,000 settlement with his school district and the sheriff’s office. The speech was scheduled for after school hours. Blake Benson stayed on campus and held up a McCain sign as classmates entered the gym.
One of Joanne's commenters strikes me as exceedingly insightful, stating:
I’m always hopeful that enough of these smackdowns against overzealous school administrators will finally cause the lot of them to understand their limits. It’s good to dream.
It's interesting to note that even though the ACLU (rightly) represented the student in this case, there's no love lost for the organization in a few of the comments.
The answer to yesterday's question is: Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union orbited for 3 days in 1963. Sally Ride first flew on the shuttle Challenger in 1983; she was the third woman in space, after Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya.
Today's question is: In what year was Sputnik launched?
It's one thing to try and fail to do something--say, reform the social security program. It's another to promise something and then renege on that promise.
Watch here to see Barack Obama, on many different occasions, promise that health care reform negotiations would take place on C-SPAN.
Now click here and read the letter from the CEO of C-SPAN, "asking that they (leaders in Congress) please, please open to his cameras the meetings to craft the final consensus version of the gazillion-dollar healthcare bill that President Obama wants so very badly."
And why will this process most certainly not be televised? From the last link above: "Senate Democrat Harry Reid and House Democrat Nancy Pelosi are inclined to finish up the 2,500-plus-page legislation themselves behind closed doors, skipping the usual Senate-House conference committee that would include those pesky Republicans." No one is suggesting that the President is encouraging them to comply with the camera request; on the contrary, there's no evidence at all that he now wants the process to be made public.
Draining the swamp. Hope and change.
More of the same. Business as usual.
Update, 1/7/10: Jack Cafferty on CNN blasts the president for not even trying to keep his campaign promises, especially regarding "transparency" and "openness".
Update, 1/8/10: Even Jon Stewart won't try carry water for the president on this topic (or others)--and the link includes video.
Today the major Sacramento newspaper had an article about a nearby school district's study regarding homework:
How much homework is too much?
The Davis Joint Unified School District has conducted a survey to see if parents think teachers are overloading kids with take-home work.
An estimated 2,000 parents responded, and the results will be out next week. Davis administrators plan to use the findings to reshape the district's homework policy.
The article provides the obligatory quotes on the anti-homework side--"my baby doesn't have enough time to play soccer"--but nothing from other side except recognition that a different opinion exists. As I've said numerous times, many kudos to the major Sacramento paper for publishing reader comments on each of its stories; I find my self in complete agreement with commenter "darren65", who comes across as astute, reasoned, and correct:
As a teacher, I cannot imagine why anyone would *want* to assign so-called busy work. That's just more work for a teacher to grade.
I assign the number of practice problems that I think will allow the student not just to "get it", but to "remember it" through repetition. That number may be as small as a few or as many as 25 in the vast majority of cases.
Contrary to the views of some, my sole mission at school is to help my students *learn* mathematics. I have no interest in assigning work for its own sake or in depriving students of their free time.
(Paraphrasing an old commercial here) I'm not just a teacher, I'm also a parent. I understand both sides of the issue.
My natural sleeping rhythms make me a "night person". During summer vacation, absent some reason not to, my usual sleeping time is 2am to 10am.
Staying up late at night over Christmas break, though, has caused me to pay a price. Even though I tried to go to bed and wake up at reasonable hours this week, I've still felt like death-warmed-over at school. Today I was at least awake enough to function reasonably well; I'll probably be completely back in the groove tomorrow.
It's almost refreshing in a way--the December 2009 issue of California Educator isn't near as objectionable as most issues are. It's mildly entertaining, though, to read Ole Si Se Puede's lament about Saint Obama:
Competition for one-time federal education funds, of which California would receive no more than $700 million, will require that states fall in line with certain federal guidelines - guidelines that, in their first draft, looked more like the same No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sanctions than the change the Obama administration promised. (boldface mine--Darren)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, piqued with White House pressure to accept the Senate health reform bill, threw a rare rhetorical elbow at President Barack Obama Tuesday, questioning his commitment to his 2008 campaign promises.
It's probably easier for a journalist to write a puff piece on my alma mater when he has a relative who will attend there, as is the case with this article. I genuinely liked this paragraph from the middle:
In other words, the promise is not that West Point will produce the next generation of Grants, MacArthurs, Eisenhowers or Petraeuses—though it will. The promise is more consequential. To the moms and dads of all those in uniform, West Point says: When America puts your sons and daughters in harm's way, they will be led by men and woman of character and ability.
Here's the introduction to the "quiz" I took at BeliefNet:
Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-MaticTM knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic™ will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.
So I took the quiz and here are my top five results:
I'm certainly not surprised at the #1 answer, but I was surprised by what I read at that link. One would think that I'd agree with the major tenets listed since I scored 100%, but I absolutely do not (the Genesis creation story is one such philosophical difference, for example). So while I consider myself a "mainstream Protestant", I'm not a fundamentalist or evangelical--two categories that this quiz classifies under my #1 category.
Interestingly enough, Mormon came in #8 at 69%, Islam #9 at 69%, Jehovah's Witness #14 at 60%, and Scientologist #19 at 38%. And bringing up the rear:
If it's not too personal, take the quiz and let us know in the comments how you score and if you think it's "right". I've certainly identified my own concerns about the label I was given.
The University of California, Davis, joined seven other California colleges on the Kiplinger's Personal Finance list of "100 Best Values in Public Colleges 2009-10."
UC Davis ranked 41st on the Kiplinger's list, which included UC San Diego (11th), UCLA (13th), UC Berkeley (18th), UC Irvine (20th), UC Santa Barbara (29th), California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (50th) and UC Santa Cruz (68th).
Kiplinger's noted that the listed schools "continue to deliver strong academics at reasonable prices, in many cases by offering the same or more financial aid as in previous years."
The answer to yesterday's question is: Michael Collins remained in the command module, Columbia, orbiting the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon in the lunar module Eagle.
Today's question is: In what year was the first US space shuttle launch?
I won't excerpt this piece, I'll just reprint the bio line of the author:
Neil Frank, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University in meteorology, was director of the National Hurricane Center (1974–87) and chief meteorologist at KHOU (Channel 11) until his retirement in 2008.
