The Nirvana of Anxiety

At least twice this year, here and here, I've written about increasing student diagnoses of anxiety.  As I stated in those posts, I lean more towards the philosophy that we should teach students to accommodate their own anxiety, to learn to deal with it, rather than expect the rest of the world to accommodate and adapt to them.  I don't view that as a harsh or unfeeling view, merely one that will work in the real world.

If you were in the hospital, would you want this person as your nurse?

A Pennsylvania university nursing student is suing the school after failing a required course twice, saying anxiety and depression made it difficult for her to concentrate.

Jennifer Burbella claims her Misericordia University professor did not do enough to help her pass a class on adult health patterns.

Burbella said the professor gave her a distraction-free environment and extra time for her final exam when she took the class the second time, but did not respond to telephoned questions as promised, giving her even more stress.

Burbella said she started to break down in tears because of the lack of help.

The article points to federal discrimination law, which I assert is a case study in the concept of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

And to answer my own question:  no, I myself would not want this person as my nurse.

My Plan Is To Move To Reno

Why CalPERS retirees flee California

About 15 percent of the 561,000 pensioners in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System live their golden years outside the Golden State, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of fund data by The Sacramento Bee. The vast majority have flocked to low-tax or no-tax states, creating a veritable river of cash that flows out of California and into cities such as Las Vegas; Reno; Tucson, Ariz.; and Grants Pass, Ore.

Overall, CalPERS sent $2.16 billion to roughly 81,000 beneficiaries living elsewhere in 2013, based on monthly pension payments made in December of that year, the latest for which CalPERS data are available.

“It’s obvious that California’s taxes and the cost of living drive some people out of the state,” said Mark Beach, AARP’s Sacramento-based communications director, when told about Nevada’s popularity among CalPERS retirees. “I’m surprised the number of them leaving isn’t higher."

I laughed at this part:

Now, Beck watches California headlines with a grim satisfaction as the state has cycled in and out of fiscal crises and hiked fees and taxes. Gov. Jerry Brown’s successful bid to raise taxes in 2012 was, Beck said, the worst.

“You know what the difference is between the people on the Titanic and people in California who voted for Brown?” Beck said, chuckling during a recent interview at his home. “The people on the Titanic didn’t have a choice.”

Economics in action.

An Honest Liberal on Free Speech

Kirsten Powers is one of these rare liberals. In "The Silencing,” she methodically documents—and exposes the hypocrisy, incoherence, and sheer contempt for evidence and argument that underlie—the delegitimization of dissent that has become the stock in trade of what she characterizes as the "illiberal left."  link

Once free speech is gone, the rest of our rights fall like dominoes.

Only Under Disinfecting Sunlight Do They Kinda Sorta Do The Right Thing

Yes, Boston University was correct in pointing out that one of its professors was exercising her First Amendment rights by openly and blatantly attacking white males.  Once word got out, though, they backtracked somewhat and expressed a little chagrin at what she said:

Boston University had a weekend change of heart about a new professor's angry tweets about white people, after FoxNews.com and others reported on the racially-charged comments -- and Terrier alumni threatened to stop writing checks...

“The University does not condone racism or bigotry in any form and we are deeply saddened when anyone makes such offensive statements,” Riley told FoxNews.com Saturday...

“If she were a white racist rather than an anti-white racist, she would never be hired."

If it weren't for double standards, academia would have no standards at all.

Technology and Its Added Value to Education

Technology is a tool, not a "goal" or a "standard". If the answer in education is "technology", the most likely question is "how can we spend the most amount of money for the least education bang?" Almost 10 years ago I pointed out the folly of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and I was called a hater, a racist, a Luddite, an obstructionist, and worse, for not believing the hype. I chose then, and still choose, to think with my head and to feel with my heart, and that bifurcation serves me well.  The real world sometimes requires more than good intentions, it requires good ideas--and thinking that a tool is going to solve education problems is a fool's errand:

Technology can’t provide a quick fix for social problems, Kentaro Toyoma tells MIT Technology Review.

When he worked for Microsoft in India, Toyoma tried to use technology to strengthen schools, teach farming techniques and improve health. Now a “recovering technoholic” and university professor, he’s the author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology.

One Laptop per Child, which which provided low-cost laptops to children in the Third World, had little effect, says Toyoma.

It was a tremendous waste of money, TED Talks notwithstanding.

The Home Stretch!

On Friday I received the "study list" for my final exam.  The list contains 16 short answer questions of which 5 will appear on the test (answers should be 3-4 sentences each) and 2 essay questions, of which one will appear on the test.  Who knew the history of mathematics could be so intellectually deep?!

I'll take the test some time after school this week.  The pressure's on :-)

Mixed Messages

But we're not supposed to water our lawns.

Politically Correct History

Three Days?

This error seems indicative of much more serious problems in this school district's kitchens, and hence three days seems exceedingly light to me:

An East Tennessee school district that served 6-year-old pork to students has suspended the child nutrition manager over the incident, it was reported Friday.

Manager Mandy Kenner was suspended three days without pay, WCYB-TV reported.

Misunderstanding Economics

Regarding the former Labour leader, in the wake of this past week's British election:

The cause of the Labour downfall is simple enough. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, proves to be a hard-line Leftist, believing that the state should control the individual and the individual should have no control over the state. Resenting capitalism, he wants to control markets and punish through taxation everyone who has benefitted from markets.

“Benefitted” from markets? Who doesn’t “benefit” from markets? The author should have said “been successful”.  Was that a poor choice of words or a look into the author's true beliefs?

We're Not Taxed Enough Here In California, According to Liberals

Proposition 13 passed in 1978 because government was raising property taxes so high, so fast, that people--especially the elderly on fixed incomes--couldn't afford to keep their homes.  It was a limit on runaway government.  Oh yes, it was an imperfect limit, as California is still one of the highest-taxed states in the country, but at least it allows people to keep their homes by limiting tax increases to 2% per year.  There's a move afoot to undermine Prop 13 by changing the limit increases on commercial buildings, but make no mistake about it:  if you give an inch, they'll take a mile.  One crack in that dam and whole thing will eventually burst.

And who wants to take that first inch, make that first crack?  The California Teachers Association, among others:

A coalition of public employee unions and other liberal groups, including many churches, launched a campaign Thursday to alter Proposition 13, California’s iconic property tax limit, and raise billions of dollars by hiking taxes on commercial property.

The organization, Make It Fair, is headed by unions, including the California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union, which would be the main source of millions of dollars to qualify the initiative for the 2016 ballot and campaign for its passage.

The proposed measure would remove Proposition 13’s limits on what the organization considers to be commercial property – industrial, retail and office complexes, mostly – while leaving them in place for owner-occupied homes, residential rental properties and agricultural land.

If enacted, the Proposition 13 revision would raise as much as $9 billion a year that advocates say are needed to adequately finance schools and improve local government services.

How high are California's business taxes already, such that so many of our businesses are fleeing to Nevada and Texas?

This is a stupid idea.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article20431737.html#storylink=cpy

The Essence of the Modern Left

I've heard the Common Core described this way, too:  we can't accelerate students (in math) too much because we have to provide a good education for everyone, not just the top students, and Common Core (of course, properly implemented) will provide that good education.  I'm not one who believes it's smart to make everyone "equal" by bringing down the best and brightest, but this author is:

In an interview with ABC Radio last week, philosopher and professor Adam Swift said that since “bedtime stories activities . . . do indeed foster and produce . . . [desired] familial relationship goods,” he wouldn’t want to ban them, but that parents who “engage in bedtime-stories activities” should definitely at least feel kinda bad about it sometimes: “I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,” he said.

What a complete turn-around from reality--it's not the parents who don't read to their kids who do those kids harm, it's other parents who actually do good for their own kids who...oh, hell, I can't even present such a stupid argument without throwing up a little bit in my mouth.

I'd like to believe this was from The Onion, but it's from National Review.  *sigh*

Opportunity

There's a list of "life lessons" falsely attributed to Bill Gates but apparently originally created by an education reformer, one Charles Sykes. Number 5 is:

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grand-parents (sic) had a different word of burger flipping. They called it opportunity.

Flipping burgers wasn't beneath James Franco's dignity, either:

In 1996, I moved to Los Angeles from Palo Alto at age 18 to study English at UCLA. I soon realized that half the city was working in the movie industry and the other half was trying to get into it, and because I hadn’t applied to the theater department as an incoming freshman, I would have to wait two years to even apply.

Two years seemed like an eternity, so I dropped out of college and went to a hole-in-the-wall acting school in the Valley. My parents, who both had master’s degrees and valued education, told me I would have to support myself if I wasn’t enrolled in college.

I didn’t have a car, so I tried to get a job at all the restaurants within walking distance of my post-dropout Valley apartment. (I shared it with two other aspiring actors and slept on the couch.) I had very little work experience. In high school, I was fired from a coffee shop for reading behind the counter and from a golf course for reading while driving the cart on the driving range. All the waiter jobs were taken by more experienced actor/waiters.

Someone asked me if I was too good to work at McDonald’s. Because I was following my acting dream despite all the pressure not to, I was definitely not too good to work at McDonald’s. I went to the nearest Mickey D’s and was hired the same day.

I was given the late shift drive-thru position. I wore a purple visor and purple polo shirt and took orders over a headset. I refrained from reading on the job, but soon started putting on fake accents with the customers to practice for my scenes in acting class.

It's a neat story.  I like it.

In The Land of Socialist Equality, Some Are More Equal Than Others

How could this happen in Deep Blue California?

Those who live in the tech Mecca of Silicon Valley enjoy the highest level of well-being in the nation. Residents live more than four years longer than the average American, earn nearly double the income and have nearly triple the number of graduate degrees, according to a recent report measuring opportunity in the nation's 435 congressional districts and Washington D.C.

Less than 100 miles away in the state's Central Valley, however, residents have the lowest level of well-being. In this agricultural hub, people live nearly a year less than the national average and an individual's earnings are roughly equal to the poverty line for a single parent with two children. Nearly four in ten fail to graduate from high school, far below the nation's norm.

As a result, California is the most unequal state in the nation when it comes to well-being, according to the report by Measure of America, which is a project of the Social Science Research Council.

Where's the social justice?!

Teachers Unions, All For The Kids

Two articles in the local paper put the lie to that common misperception.  The first is the news story:

A legislative committee on Wednesday rejected Republican education bills that would have overhauled teacher tenure and firing rules in response to a federal judge striking down California’s teacher employment laws.

In a resounding ruling last year, Judge Rolf Treu declared that California’s laws violate the civil rights of students by allowing ineffective teachers to remain in classrooms. Treu’s decision in Vergara v. California specifically targeted the method for firing teachers; the length of time it takes teachers to win permanent employment status; and the last-in-first-out policy dictating that the least experienced teachers go first during budget-driven layoffs.

The teacher firing method was addressed in a law passed last year. Majority Democrats killed the latter two in the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday by sending them to “interim study.” The politically powerful California Teachers Association has appealed Treu’s ruling and opposed the Republican bill package. Representatives of the CTA and the California Federation of Teachers union testified against the bills Wednesday, as did long lines of working teachers.

The second is an opinion piece:

Shirley Weber, born in Arkansas and reared in a poor neighborhood of Los Angeles, acquired a doctorate degree and taught at college for four decades before becoming San Diego’s first African American Assembly member in 2012.

This year, she introduced two bills that drew the ire of teacher and police unions, and they pounced last week as a deadline for committee action loomed.

One, Assembly Bill 1495, would make mild changes in the state’s teacher tenure law, responding to a judge’s ruling that the existing system shortchanges poor children.

Protecting tenure is a bottom-line, line-in-the-sand issue for the California Teachers Association and other unions. But Weber, a former president of the San Diego Board of Education, believes that more should be done to weed out bad teachers, who often wind up teaching – or not teaching – poor children.

The Assembly Education Committee, dominated by CTA sycophants, gave Weber a rough hearing before killing her bill. But she matched her critics word for word, saying, “When I see what’s going on, I’m offended, as a senior member of this committee who has probably more educational background and experience than y’all put together on top of each other.”

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/dan-walters/article20221530.html#storylink=cpy

This is what happens when you live in a one-party state, especially when that one party, while bad in its own right, is beholdin' to very bad friends.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article19903074.html#storylink=cpy

Mystery To Me

In front of my house I have two sections of lawn, a very small one to the left of my driveway and my "front lawn" to the right side of my driveway.

The section on the left is a little wild, and in the middle of it some beautiful flowers from my neighbor's patch have started growing.  I don't know what they are--marigolds?  But even though they were in the middle of this patch of grass, I liked how they looked.  They add color and life and they look wild.

Or they did until a couple days ago, when I notice that someone had cut them down.  Why would someone do that?

The plot thickened today.  I noticed that someone had mowed my lawn on both sides of the driveway, that's why the flowers were cut off.  I mowed it perhaps two weeks ago so it didn't look any shorter to me, but the "trails" left by the lawnmower wheels, that was the giveaway.  See, I usually mow my lawn "back and forth", and that's certainly how I mowed it last time.  But the lawnmower trails are going "up and down". 

Who mowed my lawn?  My neighbor's lawn isn't mowed, just mine.  It's totally bizarre.

One of the Things I Miss About Living In Colorado Springs

One of my weekend rituals is to get on my phone and check a pre-selected list of webcams on my phone before getting out of bed.  I look at cams of the Vatican, of Venice, of the Acropolis, of Neuschwanstein Castle, of the Eiffel Tower, of London's Tower Bridge, of Cancun, of St. Martin's Maho Beach, of DC, of San Juan Island, of... you get the idea.  In the webcam app I use I have 25 locations saved, all of them of places I've been.  It's like taking a mini-vacation in the morning.

Here's the view of Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak this morning:

So Many Rules

This list of playground rules is posted at a local elementary school:

Notice the second requirement under "snack".  Perhaps the author is suggesting that if you invert the trash, it will multiply.

Voter Fraud

This is my third post in a row attacking some of today's liberal talking points:

VOTER FRAUD IS REAL:  There is growing evidence non-citizens are voting.  And of course this is precisely why leftists keep challenging voter ID laws, while simultaneously taking executive action to undermine existing immigration law and grant legal permission for illegals to remain in the country.  Since when is asking for ID discriminatory?  I think I’m going to sue my public library.  And maybe the police department, the next time they pull me over.

What Microaggressions Really Are

This makes sense to me:

We used to call "microaggressions" our personal peeves, but the Social Justice Warriors want to make it sound important (and give it the false sheen of academic rigor), so they called it "microaggressions." Note this word also shifts the party responsible -- it used to be understood that if you had a pet peeve, it was your pet peeve.

Now comes the word "microaggression" to make it sound like the guy who activated your pet peeve did so voluntarily and, well, aggressively -- instead of it just being you getting annoyed, because you're sensitive.