Put Up Or Shut Up

Since 2007, Al Gore has been warning that there will be no north polar ice cap in the summer "in five years". Well, a year and a half from now, I guess we'll find out how much stock to put in the Goracle's words.

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Kazakhstan, which is well known for its potassium.

Today's question is:
Whose California license plate read “REDUCE”?

Respect and Civility

Instapundit quotes Victor Davis Hanson:

In times to come, the period between the failed campaign of John Kerry and the Democratic control of the Congress, coupled with the beginning of the successful surge, should be known as “The Insane Years.” This was the era in which Guantanamo was a gulag, renditions were the stuff of Hollywood movies, and Bush and Cheney were deemed veritable war criminals. Was it all a dream, those nightmare years of 2004-7?

I recall all that only because Oprah was just quoted as calling for more civility to be shown President Obama (“even if you’re not in support of his policies, there needs to be a certain level of respect”), echoing the president’s own post-Tucson insistence on a new amity between opponents. Bill Maher recently expressed outrage over the uncivil tone shown Barack Obama in Bill O’Reilly’s Super-Bowl Day interview. I think such concern for deference and conciliation is altogether fine and good; but, again, do we recall the crazy years of not so long ago?

This was the period in which Michael Moore called for U.S. defeat in Iraq and dubbed the Islamists who were killing our own soldiers “Minutemen.” . . . I do remember 2007, when the New York Times gave a discount to MoveOn.org for the ad hominem “General Betray Us” ad. Hillary that day suggested the general’s testimony required a suspicion of disbelief. Barack Obama assured us the surge had failed, and Joe Biden lectured Petraeus on trisecting Iraq — in the days before Iraq became, in Biden’s words, “our greatest achievement.”

Whenever I use the label "hypocrisy", it's almost always accompanied by "liberals/lefties"--as it is this time.

A Progressive Tax System

This is progress???

A quarter of all of Britain's income tax revenues this year will be paid by just one per cent of earners, according to official data.

The figure is in sharp contrast to 1978, an era associated with supertaxes, when the top one per cent paid 11 per cent of all the tax revenues.

Experts suggested the projections, published by HM Revenue and Customs, was evidence of how the rich had got richer over the last three decades, while the tax burden on them had increased substantially in recent years.

The new top rate of 50p income tax rate came into force in April 2010, landing a small number of people with the highest rate of income tax since 1988.

I wonder who these "experts" are, especially when in the very next sentence we're told that tax rates went up. Lefties, you gotta love 'em.

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Smee.

Today's question is:
Sacha Baron Cohen's character Borat hails from which country? Bonus: according to Borat, for what export product is that country well known?

School Replaces Textbooks With Kindles

I don't see this happening on a mass scale in K-12 education. College-level, yes; K-12, no. I notice the reporter didn't mention any of the difficulties the school has had with issuing Kindles....

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Every 76 years.

Today's question is:
In Peter Pan, who is Captain Hook's first mate?

Ah, Italia....

I've been emailing back and forth today with a former student and recent college graduate who's living the 20-something dream in Italy, and she's given me permission to post the following comments she made about public education where she lives:

That's a shame about the budget cuts. I've been teaching a few hours here and there. Being a native speaker of English is the only thing I can capitalize on at the moment. Frankly, my first-hand experience with Italy's school system has really made me see how inefficient the America system can be. High school is specialized here. There's a school for science, one for classical studies, and one for the arts, not to mention an agrarian, a culinary, an automotive, and an enological tech school, and that's just in my tiny little medieval valley. The education is more tailored to what kids might want to go into, but it doesn't limit them when university time rolls around. The presence of the tech schools means that kids that aren't college-bound actually graduate with a diploma and a good deal of training. Much better than a system that (sorta) prepares everyone for a university degree they might not want, or moreover, not be able to afford. Italy also spends less per student than a lot of other countries, including the U.S.. I worked in the lab with a guy who only went to the enological high school. You'd need a BS in chem from a reputable university to do the same job in America and you wouldn't be nearly as qualified as he was at 17.

I find that the U.S. school system likes to b***s*** itself. State funded education that tries to guarantee individual development and promote personal growth, self esteem, and teamwork and all those buzz words...the schools here are part of a government-funded system, educating people so that they don't become burdens to said government later on. Sure it's a tad socialist, but why should public education have anything other than publicly-minded goals.

Been giving that a lot of thought. I teach at the scientific high school and oh...my...god it's freaking beautiful. It's in the old bastille (there's a moat!). The hallways are spotless, the technology up to date, and the students are motivated and interesting. Maybe it's just a different mentality here, but they're doing something right.

One person's opinion, a person whose opinion I trust.

I'll comment on one point she made, though. All public education is socialist, and that's not necessarily bad. What she describes in Italy, though, sounds a lot like what we in the US would call magnet schools. What we mostly have in the US, where every square kid is pounded into the round hole of college prep and so-called 21st Century Skills, is much more "socialist" (as a pejorative, not as a descriptor) than what she described in her "little medieval valley".

New CTEN Blog

The California Teachers Empowerment Network has started a blog, one whose purpose is to publish alternate viewpoints on matters related to education in general and teachers in particular. Please check there periodically.

Bjorn Lomborg on Green Jobs

I've mentioned Mr. Lomborg several times on this blog--just enter his name in the search box at the top (or preferably the one at the bottom) of this page to see other posts. To cut to the quick, he's a leftie Danish vegetarian environmentalist who believes in anthropogenic global warming.

He also makes sense when discussing how to deal with it.

In this article he puts the lie to the idea of "green jobs":

Political rhetoric has shifted away from the need to respond to the "generational challenge" of climate change. Investment in alternative energy technologies like solar and wind is no longer peddled on environmental grounds. Instead, we are being told of the purported economic payoffs—above all, the promise of so-called "green jobs." Unfortunately, that does not measure up to economic reality.

The Copenhagen Consensus Center asked Gürcan Gülen, a senior energy economist at the Bureau for Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, to assess the state of the science in defining, measuring, and predicting the creation of green jobs. Gülen concluded that job creation "cannot be defended as another benefit" of well-meaning green policies. In fact, the number of jobs that these policies create is likely to be offset—or worse—by the number of jobs that they destroy.

On the face of it, green-job creation seems straightforward. Deploying more wind turbines and solar panels creates a need for more builders, technicians, tradesmen, and specialist employees. Voilà: Simply by investing in green policies, we have not only helped the climate but also lowered unemployment. Indeed, this is the essence of many studies that politicians are eagerly citing. So what did those analyses get wrong?

And then he tells us.

The end of the first page ends thusly:

The fundamental problem is that green-energy technologies are still very inefficient and expensive compared to fossil fuels. Deploying less efficient, more expensive alternative-energy sources will hurt businesses and consumers, not help them.

As I said, I like the way he addresses his concerns with an economics mindset. Go read the entire article for yourself if you want to find out what's on page 2.

Update, 2/14/11: Check out this book on Amazon :-)

Rented/Bought Movies Yesterday

Yesterday I rented two movies and bought (for only $5.99) 21, the Kevin Spacey movie about card counting in casinos. And this morning I come across the following related story:

The co-founder of a criminal enterprise known as the Tran Organization pled guilty last month to scamming casinos across the country out of millions of dollars, bringing to a close one of the largest card-cheating cases in recent FBI history.

Van Thu Tran, 45, along with her husband, parents, extended family, and others, participated in a surprisingly simple scheme to cheat casinos at the gaming tables.

Tran and her husband were dealers at an Indian tribal casino in San Diego in 2002 when they devised a plan to use a false shuffle to track cards and thereby guarantee successful betting.

Initially, it was a pretty bare bones operation, said Special Agent Peter Casey, one of several case agents who worked the Tran investigation out of our San Diego Field Office.

Over time, the couple branched out from an Asian card game called Pai Gow to blackjack, and they enlisted many others in the scheme including dealers at other casinos with the promise of easy money.

For awhile, the money was easy, because some of the tribal casinos security was not yet sophisticated enough to pick up on the scam. Before the ring was rounded up in 2007, some 29 casinos from Canada to Mississippi were hit for about $7 million.

New Look

After over 6 years with the same look, I've changed--hopefully updated--the appearance of Right On The Left Coast. I trust you'll find it appealing and easier to read.

Same great content, fresh new look!

Saturday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1927, in Illinois.

Today's question is:
How often does Halley's comet “return” to Earth?

An Icelandic Teacher Opposes Budget Cuts

The problems in Iceland sound similar to what I wrote about in this post earlier today, but unlike me, this Icelandic teacher takes a decidedly Marxist/socialist view of things:

The education of Icelandic children is facing an ominous threat. Funding to schools is being slashed by municipal authorities, which can only have dire consequences for the current generation of children. So Icelanders have a stark decision to make in the immediate future. In a nutshell, citizens must choose between the welfare of their children and increasing taxes to those who can afford it...

Accepting the proposition that children are sacred, the parents rightly protest to the municipalities. The municipalities have no money. Ergo, the municipalities must get more money. However, the government has no money to give them. So the government must get more money.

This is where we run into a roadblock. The obvious solution is for government to increase taxes to those who can afford it in order to save the children from harmful cuts.

Enter the neoliberal mouthpiece, with the standard baseless dogma about the inherent evil of taxes. Greed is good. To such people, economic austerity is good for everybody but their true constituency: the wealthy...

Those who have the money must pay up through taxes. To do otherwise is to cannibalise the future of Iceland's children.

He doesn't consider the value of teaching Iceland's children about the cost of socialism or even the cost of government. No, he goes right for "the rich", believing "the children" are entitled to other people's money. We have plenty of "the rich", and the companies they own, leaving California for more business-friendly environments in nearby states. Iceland has only 300,000 people in the whole country, less than 1% of California's population; it can't be that hard for "the rich" to up and leave if they're not entitled to keep what they earn, leaving the rest to fend for themselves.

If It's A Public Meeting, Who Owns The Video?

This is interesting:

An Evanston dad was hoping for a response when he posted a video clip on YouTube that showed a heated exchange touching on race during a public school board meeting.

But the fallout that ensued had as much to do with legal questions, after an official with the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 cited copyright infringement and successfully asked the video website to remove the original clip.

YouTube complied — and the father, Becket Strom, responded by posting several more video snippets taken from the same Jan. 24 board meeting.

Strom, who said someone gave him the video after obtaining it from the district, said he wanted to show how the superintendent's behavior is "problematic to the community."

Now school officials have asked their lawyer to weigh in.

"Obviously, someone can come in and record an open meeting," said John Relias, an attorney who represents District 65.

But because the video may have been taken from a DVD provided by the district, "it's a very complicated question."

"Just because it could be obtained through a FOIA (federal Freedom of Information Act) does not automatically give the person a right to post to YouTube," Relias said.

I'm curious to see how this turns out. Absent deeper thought on the subject, I'm presently inclined to support the parent on this one.

California's Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost, And They're Camping Out In My Eaves

Thursday after school we had a staff meeting, and the topic was the district budget for next year. Property taxes don't fund schools in California, all funding comes from the state; so when Uncle Sunny (the state equivalent of Uncle Sam?) has an empty wallet, every district in the state feels it.

California's profligacy has been, to use a popular term, "unsustainable" for decades, and we seem to have reached the cliff. We've known this day was coming, but politicians and the voting public refused to do anything about it until we reached a crisis, and even now there are some who refuse to accept reality.

My school district has a budget of about $365 million dollars a year. In the best-case scenario, one which involves a state-wide special election in June that passes some tax extensions, my district will have to cut only about $37 million. If the tax extensions don't pass, the number skyrockets up to over $50 million.

If it hasn't happened already, the state Board of Education is expected to allow districts to shorten the next school year from 180 to 175 days. March 15th, the day state law requires districts to notify teachers who might be laid off the next year, is expected to be bloody, with over a third of our district's teachers' potentially receiving layoff notices. Negotiations are currently underway regarding furlough days and pay cuts.

It's a good thing I chose to go to Iceland this year, because I won't be able to afford to next year.

California, like the federal government, doesn't have an income problem. It has a spending problem. You can't go buy a house in Beverly Hills, shower yourself in minks and diamonds, and then complain that your boss doesn't pay you enough. You have to look at how much money you have and make, and budget accordingly. Our state government is full of departments and agencies (and I'm not sure that list is exhaustive) that are nice-to-haves when time is good, but absolutely silly in an economic environment such as this. But it's easier to cut the education budget. I wonder how much welfare will be cut? California has 10% of the country's population but a full third of the country's welfare recipients--might you wonder why that is? Will we continue to spend money on bullet trains from nowhere to nowhere, or on embryonic stem cell research?

Now I'm not saying that the education budget shouldn't be cut. When education makes up half the state budget, the budget cannot be balanced without touching education. I get that. But is there not one department or agency that could be abolished in its entirety? I don't expect there will be. In other words, I doubt our legislature and governor will identify so much as a single redundant agency or department whose mission could be absorbed by another agency, much less just abolish one outright as not critical to the operation of the state. Most will probably agree that education is a critical state function.

So, furlough days. Between teacher work days and staff development days, there are (I think) 5 days right there our district could cut without affecting students. Cutting staff development days just takes money out of my pocket, but cutting teacher work days requires me to work for free--because the work still has to get done. For example, we have 2 such days immediately before school starts, and these days include staff meetings as well as getting our classrooms set up for the new year. Those activities will have to be done, whether or not we get paid for them. Another such day is the day immediately after first semester final exams. The students get Friday off and we teachers have a day to grade finals and get grades inputted. That will still have to be done, whether or not there's a teacher work day allotted for it.

If they shorten the school year 5 days, those would be another 5 days they wouldn't pay me for. 10 days total out of 185. Then tack on a pay cut on top of that. Yes, I definitely should start working on that master's degree!

So personally, I'm looking at having to shoulder some of California's economic burden. Of course I don't like it--who would?--but I recognize that it's necessary if California is to get its fiscal house in order. I try to look at it this way: my retirement depends on the financial solvency of this state, so let's get that fixed!

Economically, the 2011-2012 school year is not going to be a good one for me. My hope is that it will be a good start for California.

Friday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
2010. Air Force won the Independence Bowl, Navy lost in the Poinsettia Bowl, and Army won the Armed Forces Bowl.

Today's question is:
When did the Harlem Globetrotters play their first game?

Busted For Blogging

I don't know exactly where the line is, but the teacher in this story came a lot closer to it than I ever do:

Since it hit the Associated Press wires, the story has spread to more than 200 publications. Natalie Munroe, an English teacher at Central Bucks High School, was suspended and faces dismissal for what she wrote about her students and school on her personal blog “Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?”

As I put in my comment on the above-linked post, Ms. Munroe was definitely indiscreet. I certainly wouldn't write the things quoted--at least, not very often at all, and certainly not about identifiable students. She's certainly gotten closer to the line than I would ever go, but did she cross that line? I guess we'll find out.

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
US intelligence knew that Yamamoto would be conducting an inspection tour of Japanese units, and a squadron of American P-38 Lightning aircraft was dispatched to “dispatch” Yamamoto. The Americans succeeded, shooting down Yamamoto's plane over Bougainville.

Today's question is:
What was the first year that all three major US service academies—Army, Navy, and Air Force—played in a bowl game at the end of football season?

Heck, Must Everything Be Made Political?

(In the event you couldn't figure it out,) I enjoy politics as much as the next guy. Still, politics isn't the end all, be all of human existence. Not everything needs to be made into a political jujitsu match! There are plenty of stores I frequent, even knowing that they give lots of money to Democrats; I only boycott when the stores trumpet that knowledge (e.g. Ben and Jerry's) in an attempt to appeal to a certain demographic, or otherwise display an extreme bias or aversion to my beliefs (MSNBC).

So I just roll my eyes when I see stories like this one, which make me wonder about some people's sanity:

As chocolatiers plan for one of their biggest sales weeks of the year, human rights activists are stepping up efforts to make consumers think twice before purchasing the traditional box of chocolates for their sweethearts for Valentine's Day on Monday.

One online campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast, which is helping to prop up the pariah regime of incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, while another focuses on ending the alleged use of child labor by growers in West Africa, which produces about two-thirds of the world's cocoa...

Activist group Green America is urging consumers to send a "valentine" to U.S.-based Hershey, or e-mails directly to its executives, urging the use of cocoa that has "been certified to be free from the worst forms of abusive child labor."

Some leftie will try to score a cheap point by accusing me of supporting abusive child labor. My response to that would be a labored breath and a sarcastic, "Yes, that must be it."

In the case above we have a single group that is trying to take advantage of a "holiday" in order to spread its political message. Do we really want to expand that type of behavior as much as we could? Think about it.