When Did People Get So Stupid?

When did the concept of "fairness" take the turn it has into Crazyville?

An elementary school in the outer suburbs of Atlanta has outlawed birthday cupcakes, cookies and, in fact, all food from birthday parties over fears that some kids with food allergies could feel sad and left out...

A school district spokesman said the new policy will not apply to various holiday celebrations. It’s not clear why kids with allergies will presumably be left out of those events.

Should This Guy Have Anything To Do With Kids?

Unions are by nature coercive--and this man is violent.  He gets this angry over Common Core standards?  Really?
(check out 1:35-2:35)

Iraq

With Iraq falling to pieces you can expect a lot of revisionist history coming so that it won't seem that President Obama carries a large share of the blame.  Don't fall for it.  Instapundit has everything you need here, including:
What Democrats were saying about Iraq before the 2003 invation
Administration bragging about how peaceful Iraq was (under Obama's watch)
Obama saying that preventing genocide would not be a reason to keep US troops in Iraq
An Obama tweet bragging that Obama kept his promise to bring US troops home, and mocking Mitt Romney for calling the decision "tragic"

Ships

It seems amazing to say, but this was the third cruise I've taken this calendar year!  Norwegian Sun is a mid-sized ship at 76,000 tons (for comparison, Titanic, clocked in at about 46,000 tons) and it was home for 7 days.  My cabin was on Deck 10, which apparently was far enough away from steerage that if the ship were to be abandoned, I'd get a genuine life boat and not just a raft!

We encountered other ships, either in ports or en route.  I'm an army guy through and through, but I must admit I do enjoy looking at and being on ships.  Here are some pictures:

 Norwegian Sun in Whittier, AK

 Norwegian Sun "marking time" in Icy Strait, just outside Hoonah, AK

 An Alaska Maritime Highway ferry, Carnival Miracle, and the Star Princess in Skagway, AK

 Star Princess arriving in Juneau

 Carnival Miracle coming out of Tracy Arm

 Docked in Skagway, AK

Disney Wonder docking in Vancouver, BC, at about 7 am

"Steaming" towards Hubbard Glacier

Celebrity Century (identified by a reader who was on that ship!), Norwegian Sun, and Holland America's Oosterdam in Juneau, AK

Fun Time's Over

I go back to work next Monday, starting with training at the district.  Kid's show up a week from today.

Holy crap!

Local Twist on the Ebola Story

This young man is a former student of mine.  He's also subbed for me at school :-)

Dress Code Violation

You read something like this and both shake your head and laugh:

There are innumerable ways to screw up your first day of work, but some of them have a little more panache than others. A new teacher in Wagoner, Okla. was arrested on her first day after showing up at the school both drunk and without pants.

Common Core Math Is Not Good For Students

Don't believe me?  Maybe you'll believe a UC Berkeley math professor:

Reading about the new math standards­ outlining what students should be able to learn and understand by each grade­ I found hardly any academic mathematicians who could say the standards were higher than the old California standards, which were among the nation's best. I learned that at the 2010 annual conference of mathematics societies, Bill McCallum, a leading writer of Common Core math standards, said that the new standards "would not be too high" in comparison with other nations where math education excels. Jason Zimba, another lead writer of the mathematics standards, told the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that the new standards wouldn't prepare students for colleges to which "most parents aspire" to send their children.

I also read that the Common Core offers "fewer standards" but "deeper" and "more rigorous" understanding of math. That there were "fewer standards" became obvious when I saw that they were vastly inferior to the old California standards in rigor, depth and the scope of topics. Many topics­ for instance, calculus and pre-calculus, about half of algebra II and parts of geometry ­were taken out and many were moved to higher grades.

As a result, the Common Core standards were several years behind the old standards, especially in higher grades. It became clear that the new standards represent lower expectations and that students taught in the way that these standards require would have little chance of being admitted to even an average college and would certainly struggle if they did get in...

This model-drawing mania went on in my grandson's class for the entire year, leaving no time to cover geometry and other important topics. While model drawing might occasionally be useful, mathematics is not about visual models and "real world" stories. It became clear to me that the Common Core's "deeper" and "more rigorous" standards mean replacing math with some kind of illustrative counting saturated with pictures, diagrams and elaborate word problems. Simple concepts are made artificially intricate and complex with the pretense of being deeper­ while the actual content taught was primitive.  

I've been saying this for quite some time, I'm glad I have professor at a respected university saying the same thing.  Let me emphasize the point she made that I just quoted:

Simple concepts are made artificially intricate and complex with the pretense of being deeper­ while the actual content taught was primitive.

Remember what I wrote here?

I will say this: some of the 11th grade math questions were worded in an obtuse way. I will say that we have highly qualified, very competent math teachers at my school, and some of the problems had a few of us gathered around trying to figure out exactly what a problem was asking for. If it takes 3 good math teachers, two with masters degrees and one working on one, to figure out what an Algebra 1 question is asking, then the question isn't a good one.

There's a difference between rigor, that which requires a depth of knowledge and skill, and confusion, which makes the problem unnecessarily hard while obscuring the actual math.

Ugh.

Let's return to the professor:

Yet the most astounding statement I have read is the claim that Common Core standards are "internationally benchmarked." They are not. The Common Core fails any comparison with the standards of high-achieving countries, just as they fail compared to the old California standards. They are lower in the total scope of learned material, in the depth and rigor of the treatment of mathematical subjects, and in the delayed and often inconsistent and incoherent introductions of mathematical concepts and skills. 

I agree with her completely.

For those who still want to argue, here are the professor's credentials:

Ms. Ratner is professor emerita of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. She was awarded the international Ostrowski Prize in 1993 and received the John J. Carty Award from the National Academy of Sciences, of which she is a member, in 1994.

She merits being listened to, as does anyone whose critique makes sense.

Prelude--Alaska Cruise

My mother's consort wasn't feeling well enough to travel, and surprisingly it took only a couple hours and not an extreme amount of money to get me to Alaska to take his place.

I took my mother to the airport on Saturday and I left on Sunday evening.  I got into Anchorage at 12:40 am and it appeared to be twilight.  I heard someone say that the only stars visible were the ones on the flag, and it was true!  The airport was going full-bore, and all the restaurants and shops were open!  I was told that that was common in Anchorage, as flights had to leave very early so that travelers could make morning connecting flights in Seattle (the closest US hub).  I joined my mother at the hotel and fell right asleep.

When I woke up my mother was not in the room; she'd gone down for breakfast.  She came back into the room and said matter-of-factly, "I've got to go home.  George died."  He'd had flu-like symptoms for a couple days but...wow.  We discussed it for a bit but she insisted that I go on the cruise.  There's nothing I could do about the situation at home, really, and she wanted me to see the beauty of Alaska--and I certainly wasn't going to argue with a grieving widow.

She joined me on the train to Whittier, where we spent the day walking, talking, and having a couple drinks.  When it was time for her to get on the train to return to Anchorage (she couldn't get a flight out until the next morning) I got on the ship.

That was the cloud under which my Alaska cruise started.

The World Turned Upside Down

The weather was beautiful in Alaska, with the skies as bright as they were cloudless on many of the days.  People were not joking when they talked about getting "a sunburn in Skagway".  It was perfectly clear in Vancouver yesterday, with a temperature about 85 degrees.

Sacramento is socked in with overcast with a chance of light rain.  Temps in the 70s, with high humidity.

It's almost enough to make me a believer in "climate change"!

Sometimes I Wonder

As often as I get singled out for extra special attention at airport security checkpoints, is it reasonable to wonder if it's because of the anti-TSA and anti-surveillance posts I've written on this blog? Seriously, the frequency is unlikely enough to make random chance an obvious explanation.

I continue to assert that the excessive security theater at airports is a violation of the 4th Amendment. Perhaps it's time to be honest with ourselves, admit the Constitution is no longer in force, and rename much of our law enforcement apparatus for what it really is: the Directorate of Internal Security.

Update, 8:27 am: I was just called up, by name, to the ticket counter. They said they had to check my passport again, even though I've already gone through airport security and US Customs here at the Vancouver Airport. The unhelpful agent also said she'd need to see my passport yet *again* when boarding, and refused to explain why this was the case.

Update #2:  I did eventually get on the plane in Vancouver and make it to Seattle.  Alaska prints an "all in one" boarding pass rather than one for each flight--and the barcode on mine, which worked just fine in Vancouver, wouldn't scan in Seattle.  I thought for sure I was going to be searched again--you know, because I look kinda terrorist-y--but the agent typed my confirmation code in and I was allowed to get on board.

Today I should arrive in Vancouver, BC, the terminus for my cruise.  Here are a couple of pictures I took of Vancouver in 2005, the last time I was there:

I don't have that much hair anymore, and my son is now taller than I am.

On August 3, 2013, I provided some jokes for smart people.

On August 2, 2012, I provided a quote and asked who said it.

On August 1, 2011, I wrote about my return to the gym over 3 months after my skiing accident.

On July 31, 2010, I wrote about a teacher who disciplined a student in an inappropriate way.

On July 30, 2009, I wrote about parents of students with peanut allergies.

On July 29, 2008, I wrote about paying kids for good standardized test scores.

On July 28, 2007, I wrote about the National Education Association and democracy.

But It's Hot Outside!

Inconvenient chart of the day: Coolest US summer on record