Need Any Free Textbooks?

The school district in Stockton may be able to hook you up:

A school district is giving away thousands of brand-new textbooks because they don’t meet state academic standards, officials said.

The Stockton Unified School District has stored millions of dollars worth of the elementary school supplies in a warehouse for months while trying to determine how to reclaim as much money as possible.

Officials say former superintendent Anthony Amato bought the materials from a company called “Success For All” in 2008, spending $3 million on the reading material and another $1.7 million on training.

“This really became a drama resulting in a poor choice by an out-of-state superintendent who didn’t understand the rules and regulations,” said assistant superintendent Dr. Kirk Nicholas.

Amato was fired after 14 months on the job.

The poor choice left the school district with few options and additional penalties.

That's a Grade A screw-up.

Not Enough "Tolerance" in Davis

I've previously referred to the nearby city of Davis, home of the University of California at Davis, as "Berkeley-lite". If I haven't offered enough prior evidence for the title, try this:

The University of California at Davis has backed away from a policy that defined religious discrimination as Christians oppressing non-Christians after more than two dozen Christian students filed a formal complaint.

The definition is listed in a document called, “The Principles of Community.” It defines “Religious/Spiritual Discrimination” as “The loss of power and privilege to those who do not practice the dominant culture’s religion. In the United States, this is institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian.”

I guess it's progress that they're "backing away" from such a policy, but imagine for a moment what the environment must be like for such a policy ever to see the light of day in the first place. That is why I call Davis "Berkeley-lite".

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Captain Greer.

Today's question is:
What was “Pop” Warner's real first name?

Doesn't Make Teachers Or Teachers Unions Look Good

How would you like this guy to be the public face of your profession?

A hulking teacher's union honcho whose big mouth got him bounced by cops from an Albany restaurant after he complained his quail was too small was previously reprimanded as a teacher after being accused of brazenly helping test-taking students cheat, officials said today.

Food-lovin' lobbyist Paul Egan was named in a scathing 2000 report by the Department of Education investigator as helping a group of Bronx middle-school students taking a city-wide math exam get the right answers to the test by using "several different methods to cheat."

The then-investigator, Edward Stancik, said Egan while proctoring the 1999 exam "purposely displayed the answers to the first 11 questions by leaving them unguarded on his desk for the students to find," and that he urged students to check individual answers after seeing they had gotten them wrong...

Egan was listed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records for longest recorded after-dinner speech — a Nov. 19-21, 1988 stem-winder that lasted 34 hours and 16 minutes at University College in Dublin, Ireland.

Interestingly enough, EIA is on the story, and addresses some of Egan's complaints about the restaurant:

Late and rude service? Drinks spilled? Cold and uncooked meals?

Surely not. After all, Marché is a union restaurant, organized by UNITE HERE Local 471 in 2007 through card check, and its members work as “cooks, bakers, kitchen utility workers, servers, bussers, bartenders and bellmen.” Maybe Egan should have demanded to speak to the shop steward.

Classic.

"Greedy Bastards" Paradox

From the American Thinker blog:

If we accept President Obama's economic arguments, his State of the Union address was most remarkable in the aftermath, when nothing happened.

For the sake of argument, let's agree with the President that the winning ticket of the global economic lottery will be investment in renewable energy, high-speed rail and other green industries. Bet on green and you win the future. Let's also stipulate, as the left believes, that private capital in America is in the hands of greedy bastards -- capitalists who will do anything for a buck.

The question then becomes why all those greedy bastards are not pouring money into the epochal investment opportunity that President Obama unveiled. Why is Wall Street not running up the stocks of companies positioned to flourish in the coming green economy? Where are the private equity firms that should be knocking down the doors of the solar shingle company that the President touted? Why aren't hedge fund sharpies jumping into high-speed rail? After all, if Warren Buffet or John Paulson delivered a speech that laid out the way to win the future, every other greedy bastard would be shoveling money into their ideas before the applause was over.

This is the greedy bastard paradox inherent in all government "investments." The state is left to fund the industrial policies of old or today's green schemes precisely because they are uneconomic. Economically viable investments need no government support because the greedy bastards of the private economy are already funding them...

Some on the left would counter that Big Oil is somehow preventing or undermining investment into promising clean energy technologies. Here again they run into the greedy bastard paradox. If an epic financial bonanza is right around the corner, how can the oil majors possibly keep all the other money-grubbers out of the game? And if green energy is really poised to supplant petroleum, why wouldn't Big Oil go for the gold, if only to survive? Even the most orthodox leftist should recognize that a conspiracy theory based on capitalists leaving money on the table is bankrupt.

But if the left can't call them "greedy bastards", at whom will they direct their daily 2-minute hate?

UNLV Going Bankrupt?

From the Las Vegas Sun:

UNLV President Neal Smatresk told a somber Faculty Senate on Tuesday that the administration was planning a kind of bankruptcy to deal with its budget crunch.

Under the "financial exigency" plan, tenured professors could be fired and whole departments and programs more easily closed down.

When I saw the picture at the linked article, the first thought that came to my mind was the Touchdown Jesus mural at Notre Dame. After living on borrowed money for so long, many of our public institutions may require some "divine intervention" in order to survive.

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Jack Lalanne, who passed away last month at age 96.

Today's question is:
On the tv show, who was the Mod Squad's immediate superior (played by Tige Andrew)?

Education Buzz

This week's Education Buzz is here and includes my post about smuggled documents related to national security--a RotLC exclusive!

Ew.

They say it takes all kinds. I wonder why it takes people like this:

A tenured economics professor at Colby College was forced to resign late last month after allegations surfaced that he set up a hidden surveillance camera to take photos of female students in a bathroom while chaperoning an international student trip, according to court documents.

Whole Foods and Trader Joe's

These two articles were linked on Yahoo today and I found them interesting enough to mention. Here's the skinny (get it? skinny? I slay myself):

Some of my friends jokingly call Whole Foods Market “Whole Paycheck.” The first time I shopped there, I understood why Whole Foods gained its nickname—I was stunned at how much I spent. Of course, I bought everything on my list—I hadn’t paid attention to what was a good deal and what wasn’t.

What to skip at Whole Foods:
conventional fruits and vegetables
the meat counter
health and beauty products

What to buy at Whole Foods:
local fruits and vegetables
sustainable fish and seafood
bulk foods
store-brand products

If you ever want to start a conversation at a party, try asking this question: What are the best and worst deals at Trader Joe’s? It’s only slightly less controversial than health care reform.

Americans (and I include myself) are crazy about Trader Joe’s. There are Facebook pages, books about shopping there, even fan-run websites. What inspires this passion? Jovanna Brooks, founder of traderjoesfan.com and traderjoesguide.com, says, “The reason that there are so many really die-hard Trader Joe’s fans is because you can get incredibly unique items. It’s adventure shopping all the time because there are things that are constantly new. At the same time, people get upset when products get discontinued, but that’s part of the fun.”

What to skip at Trader Joe's:
produce
meat

Toss-ups:
bakery and prepared foods
treats

What to buy at Trader Joe's:
cheese
staples
frozen foods
beyond food--flowers, body oils and soaps, etc

Years ago at Trader Joe's I bought a chocolate torte with a chocolate ganache on it. The once or so a year I've been since then I always check the freezer section to see if they still sell it, and they do. I remember the trip I took in my camper van, with one of those tortes in the frig. Memories, especially the good ones, last a lifetime.

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.

Liberals Don't See Their Own Hypocrisy

From the New York Times, of all places:

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

He said it, not me. I just agree wholeheartedly.

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Both the Vikings and the Bills are 0-4.

Today's question is:
How did Naval General (Admiral) Yamamoto, planner of the Pearl Harbor attack, die?

Does This Just Look Bad, Or Is It Really Bad?

If there was something meaningful and useful to be gained from going to a conference, is there a problem with sending some teachers?

The Chicago Public Schools system is suffering from a $700 million budget shortfall. So why did some educators travel to Las Vegas just days after a travel restriction was ordered?

CBS 2′s Dave Savini and the Better Government Association investigated questionable spending of school tax dollars and how children are impacted.

Former Scammon Elementary School teacher Laura Hoffman is angry that 14 of her Chicago Public School co-workers went on an all-expense paid trip to a Las Vegas resort and spa for a conference last year.

“That’s what happened. Does it make sense? No,” Hoffman said. “I think parents need to be aware what is happening.”

Hoffman quit her job at Scammon Elementary last year and says school officials should not have spent the $15,000 on the conference in Las Vegas while city schools are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

I'm willing to have my mind changed here, but I don't see anything wrong with attending a conference in Las Vegas if--and it's a big if--there was something meaningful and useful to be gained by having the teachers attend.

Would it have been better somehow if the conference had been held in Modesto, CA rather than Las Vegas?

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The Zugspitze.

Today's question is:
Of teams that have been to the Super Bowl, which two are tied for the worst record in the Super Bowl?

Sham U--And I'm Not Talking About the Killer Whale, Either

Some enterprising individual will hopefully be spending some time behind bars:

Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) say every year, they bust hundreds of schools that served as fronts for illegal immigration operations, leaving thousands of foreign nationals who've paid tuition in exchange for a student visa in the lurch, while the head of the "school" often winds up forfeiting property, or, behind bars.

The latest example appears to come from the San Francisco Bay Area: Tri-Valley University based in Pleasanton. Federal prosecutors say it wasn't a school at all- rather an elaborate scheme to defraud the government, and perhaps the biggest scam of its kind.

Open since 2008, TVU's website touts on-line classes in engineering, medicine, and law, and a faculty list of more than 50 highly educated professionals. But those we contacted said they'd never seen the school, or taught a class. Many had no idea their names were on the site, which is peppered with numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes ("Now you graduate, we would like to hear from you, about life and how the study at TVU and the degree do to your career, not just your million dollar donation!").

ICE officials noticed enrollment nearly tripled in a matter of months to over 1,500 students- almost all from the same region of India, and each paying $5,400 per semester to the schools founder, Susan Su.

Court documents say "since its inception, Tri-Valley University has been a "sham" university which Su, and others, have used to facilitate foreign nationals in illegally acquiring student immigration status that authorizes them to remain in the United States."

Hmmm.

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The San Francisco 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals in 1982 and 1989, and the Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills in 1993 and 1994. Pittsburgh and Dallas have met three times.

Today's question is:
What is the tallest mountain in Germany?

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Today's question is:
Two pairs of teams have met twice in the Super Bowl, with the same team winning each pair of games. Who are those pairs of teams?

Should College Students Vote In Local Elections?

Or should they vote in their "home" elections?

This situation is akin to military members, who might live anywhere in the country. Military members have a "home of record", usually where they joined from, and that is the jurisdiction in which they vote by absentee ballot.

How is the college student situation sufficiently different from the transitory military member? Both live only temporarily in their current location, even if "temporarily" means 2-4 years. Is there a legitimate argument to be made in favor of restricting voting of college populations in the college towns, and instead requiring them to vote by absentee in the elections of the municipality they call "home"? For purposes of this discussion, let's set aside whatever laws and rulings are present and discuss the issue on its own merits.

It's Only Funny Because of the Truth It Holds

Anyone who's been a teacher long enough has had at least one conference like this.


Hat tip to Buckhorn Road, where I first saw this video

Ronald Reagan's 100th Birthday

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, one of the best American presidents and certainly the best in the last half-century. Mister we could use a man like Ronald Reagan again:

It is not just Reagan's specific achievements, though, that inspire people today, that leave so many of us yearning for his brand of leadership. It is also his profound faith in the essential goodness of the American people and in the exceptional role the U.S. has been destined by the Almighty to play in the world. Reagan was a master of the stage. But the Great Communicator's power came from deeply held convictions, not from superficial eloquence. Reagan's words represented his core. There was no slight-of-hand in his speeches; he didn't use liberal language to disguise or hide his agenda.

Here's an example of showing his core beliefs, his deeply held convictions. How they resonate for us today!


He was a good man. Not perfect, by any stretch, but the very definition of a leader. You get a sense of how good a man he was--how genuine he was--at the Reagan Library. I visited there almost two years ago.

Saturday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

Today's question is:
The Khyber Pass connects which two countries?

California

California, by Phantom Planet. Nice music, nice lyrics.

On the other hand:

California has never looked less golden, with eight of its cities making the top 20 on our annual list(of America's most miserable cities).

I'll Be On The Radio Tonight

Details are currently here--although the time is 11pm Eastern, not 9pm.

Description:

The Great Education Reform Debate Part 2, Conservative vs Liberal. Participants: In the Right Hand corner, Larry Sand and Darren Miller. In the left hand corner, The Frustrated Teacher and Jason The Public School Guy. The Topics: Standardized testing, Charter Schools, Teacher Tenure, School Vouchers. Listeners can be part of the debate. Call 805-285-9736

Podcasts for previous shows are available, so I assume this one will be available, too. Or you might be able to stream it live on iTunes! Click on the iTunes button at the link above if you have nothing better to do on a Friday night....

Update: Just finished our 90 minute roundtable discussion of the topics above on Neil Haley's radio show. Neil's link is above, Larry (in addition to being the president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network) comments at RedCounty.com, The Frustrated Teacher blogs here, and I do not have a link for Jason the Public School Guy (but please send one if you have it!).

It was refreshing to learn how much we agreed upon; sometimes the differences in our views were just where we would draw the line. At one point I thought I was in Bizarro World, as conservative Larry was touting the education system of socialist Sweden while one of the liberals supported less federal control over education (federalism!) and seemed to have a problem with the fact that vouchers could disproportionately help poor inner-city minority kids! Neil did a great job as moderator herding us cats.

I did some "show prep" and was armed with a couple pages of notes, much of which didn't come in handy--but those points that I did get to make, I like to think I made them well and forcefully.

What a treat! I'm sure plenty of you readers had a more eventful Friday night than I had, and I'm glad you did, but I wonder if you had as much fun as I had! I truly enjoy mental gymnastics, which is partly why I jumped at the opportunity to take part in this show. I would enjoy a similar opportunity in the future.

Want to listen? Click here and then click on the arrow just above the "Fav" heart

or click the iTunes button to download the podcast.

Separation of Church and State?

Or just another school principal's being an idiot? It took a lawsuit to get the school to see straight:

A California elementary school is changing course after being sued for barring a fifth grader from performing to a Christian song in the school's February 4 talent show...

The lawsuit claims that after the boy's January 14 audition the school's principal, Jerilyn Shubert, told his mother the song was "offensive" and a violation of the "separation of church and state" and asked why he couldn't "pick a song that does not say Jesus so many times?"

Los Angeles Unified School District now says the district, the PTA and the boy's legal representation were (sic) have come to an agreement.

Ridiculous that it took this much effort for a kid to perform in a talent show.

Carrying a Dagger To School

If you're a Sikh, you can carry a (dulled) dagger to school. But put green plastic army men and a small American flag on your baseball cap for Crazy Hat Day, and you could be in deep crap because of the zero-tolerance ban on "weapons"--yes, the tiny plastic representations of weapons carried by the tiny plastic army men! Take a nerf gun (that shoots ping pong-type balls) to school and you get charged with a misdemeanor!

How's That Civility Coming Along?

Protesters call to lynch US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (video at link)

COMMON CAUSE RESPONDS TO CALLS FOR A CLARENCE THOMAS LYNCHING BY ITS SUPPORTERS, and James Taranto observes: “Everybody does it? Think it through and you will see that this is a stunning indictment of the American left. To begin with, it is not true that everybody does it. As we noted yesterday, the formerly mainstream media have spent the past two years trying to depict the Tea Party as precisely the sort of racist, hateful, violent political movement that Common Cause appears in the video to be. That media effort has failed, not for lack of will but for lack of evidence. If everybody did it, the Tea Party would do it, and if the Tea Party did it, you would have read about it in the New York Times.” (link)

Why does this not surprise me? Because I wrote this just four days ago.

Should Our K-12 Math Paths All Lead To Calculus?

The president of the National Council on Teachers of Mathematics says no. While I agree with that, I'm not pleased with his analysis of the issue.

Algebra isn't the problem. I can't imagine that anyone truly believes that algebra isn't a "gateway" course--students have to be capable of more than just "doing" algebra, they have to know and understand algebra, and that includes both Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 topics. Additionally, Mr. Shaughnessy's fictional algebra track strikes me as exactly that, fictional.

I have no objections to different math tracks--probability, combinatorics, statistics, and/or data analysis. All are important, valuable fields that are certainly worthy of study, and are more directly applicable to non-math/engineering/science fields than is calculus. My fear, though, is that given the NCTM's history (which extends to this day) of favoring "interpretation of data" over computation, as well as their over-insistence on calculators and computers to do the computation, there's very little "math" left over in these so-called math classes. I assert that students must know how to do all the calculations themselves so that they can understand what the calculator or computer is telling them; they must have the "number sense" before they can truly interpret the data. In the same sense that students must know their multiplication tables before they use a calculator to do such work for them (do I really need to justify that??), so must students understand the calculations that the calculator or data analysis software will do for them. They should know both the calculations and the interpretation, but one before the other.

And I'll be honest here--I don't trust the NCTM when they as an organization say that they support computational ability as well as interpretation. Words are cheap, and the organization's actions of the past several years hasn't backed up those words.

Is Higher Education a Public or a Private Good?

This is an interesting opener:

As state legislatures around the country start cutting budgets, they face a puzzler—what is the proper subsidy (if any) for higher education?

The answer to this question may hinge on another: whether higher education can be considered a “public good.” Two writers for the Chronicle of Higher Education recently weighed in on the issue. Sandy Baum, an economist, and Michael McPherson, a former college president, say that education is partly a route to a job and to personal satisfaction and therefore a private good, something that most individuals should pay for themselves. But they argue that it is also a public good—they do not want state legislatures to shirk their responsibility to support education.

I have a rather iconoclastic take on this question, one that I shared recently in an article in Independent Review. Perhaps higher education, as currently provided, is indeed a public good—but a bad one.

The CSU and UC systems have raised tuition each year, and sometimes even mid-year, much higher than the rate of inflation. When they do, students in those systems raise quite the stink--acting as if they're entitled to a low-cost education. I'm willing to listen to arguments that say that California's master plan for education, now 50 years old, could use some adjustments.

ROTC at Stanford?

I'm waiting....

Former U.S. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz have officially offered their support for the return of ROTC to Stanford. In a letter delivered today to the Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on ROTC, Rice and Shultz stated that they were joining former U.S Secretary of Defense William Perry and Stanford History Professor David Kennedy in their calls for ROTC’s return to campus.

Waiting, but not holding my breath.

Friday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Double Fantasy.

Today's question is:
Who is the only performer to have had a role in every Star Trek series, including the animated series, as well as both the original series-based and Next Gen-series based movies?

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Van Pelt.

Today's question is:
What was the name of John Lennon's last album, released just weeks before he was killed?

Plenty of Teachers Will Say "Duh" To This Study

It took someone from Harvard this long to figure out that college isn't for everyone?

A new Harvard study (PDF) says American students need to begin to decide in middle school whether they want to prepare for four-year college and then a career. The alternative approach, the study says, is to begin vocational training for a job earlier.

High school teachers could have told them this years ago.

The "Good" Kind of School Segregation

From Reason:

As Sinclair Lewis should have said, when segregation returns to American public schools it will come wrapped in a union contract and carrying a copy of The State of America's Children.

Principal Bill Jimenez should segregate those polka dots out of his tie. A high school principal in Lancaster, Pennsylvania is defending a policy of separating an underperforming segment of the student body -- and he's not talking about the Amish.

Discuss.

What Excuse Do The Greens Have For Being Against This?

From Wired:

China has officially announced it will launch a program to develop a thorium-fueled molten-salt nuclear reactor, taking a crucial step towards shifting to nuclear power as a primary energy source...

“President Obama talked about a Sputnik-type call to action in his SOTU address,” wrote Charles Hart, a a retired semiconductor researcher and frequent commenter on the Energy From Thorium discussion forum. “I think this qualifies.”

While nearly all current nuclear reactors run on uranium, the radioactive element thorium is recognized as a safer, cleaner and more abundant alternative fuel. Thorium is particularly well-suited for use in molten-salt reactors, or MSRs. Nuclear reactions take place inside a fluid core rather than solid fuel rods, and there’s no risk of meltdown.

In addition to their safety, MSRs can consume various nuclear-fuel types, including existing stocks of nuclear waste. Their byproducts are unsuitable for making weapons of any type. They can also operate as breeders, producing more fuel than they consume.

Wish we could do something related to nuclear energy in this country.

What "Free Speech" Means To Today's Lefties

I'll just quote the entire Instapundit post:

ANN ALTHOUSE: When Did The Left Turn Against Free Speech?" When they started losing the debate. "Free speech was only ever a means to an end. When they got their free speech, made their arguments, and failed to win over the American people, and when in fact the speech from their opponents seemed too successful, they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom." Nope. It was always about control.

Plus, from the comments: "I think the reason the Left so often opposes free speech now is that they have victoriously marched through the institutions and are now in control. And those in control don't care for there to be further discussion that might threaten their power. Those who are not in power are the ones who want free speech."

And, from Althouse further down in the comments: "A person from 1969 watching that video of me and Bob Wright would assume Bob was right wing and I was left wing. Bob's ranting about law and order. The me of 1969, sitting in a room with my college friends, would have said 'Nixon!' and everyone would have laughed."

An Insider's View of San Francisco

An outsider, a tourist, would only see this side of San Francisco. Dig a quarter of an inch deeper, though, and this is what you find:

District Six Supervisor Jane Kim rises with her fellow supervisors for the Pledge of Allegiance at each session of the Board of Supervisors, but she does not recite the pledge and has not done so since taking office last month, Fox KTVU reports.

Kim said that she believes it is a personal decision of how to honor the flag and country and has been surprised by the criticism.

"I don't think our flag represents a nation where there's liberty and justice for all," argued Kim.

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Harvard. He earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan, and was an assistant professor at UC Berkeley for two years.

Today's question is:
In the Peanuts comic strip, what is Linus and Lucy's last name?

Liberty vs. Benevolence

There are too many good quotes in this piece for me to do a decent job of excerpting, so do yourself a favor and read Roger Kimball's essay in toto.

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
University of California, Davis (School of Medicine).

Today's question is:
At what university did the Unabomber earn his undergraduate degree?

Two Things Wrong In This Story

While this story is from the online version of the Daily Mail, a British paper, it occurred in Colorado:

A teacher who advises colleagues on how to avoid affairs with students was caught having sex with a teenager in the back of her car.

Courtney Bowles was found by a police officer naked lying on top of the boy, who was also completely naked, from her school in Colorado.

A partly consumed bottle of vodka was also found in the car with the couple.

Her student lover initially said he was 20 years old - but later admitted he was 16.

Bowles,31,was employed at his school as a teacher's instructional coach. It was her job to trains teachers on how to maintain a professional distance from students.

OK, I'll go for the low-hanging fruit first: this woman should not be having sex with an underaged boy, whether or not he was a student at her school.

And while doing that is bad enough, everyone else who writes about that story will attack that angle. You--my readers--come here expecting more than that, and I hope not to disappoint. So now, the second problem I have with this story:

Why does this school have an "instructional coach" whose job it is "to train teachers on how to maintain a professional distance from students"? If there is such a problem at this school--besides this particular woman--why the heck isn't the school administration doing anything about it? And how did so many teachers become clueless about maintaining a professional distance; was that not covered in their credentialing classes?

There's a lot more wrong in this story than just a teacher's doing a 16-year-old.

From The "I Wish I Were Surprised, But I'm Not" File...

What could I possibly add to this Instapundit post?

IT’S AS IF ALL THAT “NEW CIVILITY” TALK WAS JUST A PLOY TO SHUT DOWN DEBATE: “Showing no concern for the new civility push that followed the Arizona massacre, a group of leftist activists from groups including Code Pink, Common Cause and jewel of liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress, turned into a loud mob complete with Nazi imagery outside a conservative gathering in Rancho Mirage, California.”

UPDATE: Say, you think some enterprising reporter will ask Obama or a spokesman whether the President condemns this sort of behavior? No, me neither.

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1970 (May 4th).

Today's question is:
At what university was Allan Bakke denied admission, resulting in the famous 1978 reverse discrimination case before the US Supreme Court?

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The University of Idaho. (Who da ho? I da ho!)

Today's question is:
In what year was the Kent State “massacre”?

What Set Off Tunisia?

Here is one view:

In sum, if you imagine Tunisia as a slightly better than average post-colonial tin-pot dictatorship, with a government that seems not to be totally economically incompetent, you won’t be far off.

So if it isn’t politics or economics, what is it that lead the people of Tunisia to rise up and overthrow their government?

Tunisia’s big problem is said to be unemployment. But unemployment there is running at somewhere between 13 percent and 14 percent, which isn’t really so bad. The real problem is that Tunisia cannot create suitable employment for the huge numbers of college graduates it creates every year.

That’s right: the education bubble popped in Tunisia.

Tunisia has a gigantic education apparatus that has earned it plaudits for years. Free university education is guaranteed to anyone who passes the government’s exams at the end of high school. As a result, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 university graduates enter the job market every year. Fifty-seven percent of young Tunisians entering the labor market are college educated.

It turns out that creating a large class of college-educated workers is not necessarily a recipe for prosperity. Tunisia has discovered it can be a recipe for political unrest and mass unemployment. For Tunisia’s recent college graduates, the unemployment level reaches to at least 30 percent. If you count in various forms of under-employment, it’s safe to say that as many as half of Tunisia’s recent college graduates are losing out in the jobs market.

Tunisia has clearly over-invested in higher education.

I don't know how accurate that thesis is, but it's not wacky enough to be dismissed out of hand.

Why I Didn't Blog Today

Update, 1/30/11: Here is a larger, clearer version of the video.

Saturday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Mike Nifong.

Today's question is:
At what university did Sarah Palin earn her undergraduate degree?

DUI Court At School

As I mentioned in this post, today we had the Real DUI Court in Schools presentation. I was impressed, much more so than I've been with the Every 15 Minutes program.

As was stated in my previous post, it was a real judge with a real defendant with a real case and a real punishment. In other words, instead of taking our students downtown to the courthouse, the courthouse came to us.

It started with a 5-10 minute long video, a blood-and-guts dramatization of what happens in car accidents. It was shocking enough to get everyone's attention. Then a 24-year-old told his story of his grad night partying, and how he wrapped his car around an oak tree and killed his best friend. After him, the bailiff had everyone rise and the judge entered and off to the races we went. A young woman (21?) was the defendant, and she waived her right to trial and pleaded no contest, which the judge informed her would be treated as admitting guilt. With all establishment of facts out of the way, the judge pronounced sentence, right there in front of all of us. For a first time offender, there was 48 hrs in jail (the woman was taken away in handcuffs), a bunch of parole, requirement to attend DUI classes and pay for them, and thousands of dollars in a laundry list of fines, penalties, and fees--and this did not include her attorneys fees, the cost to get her car out of the impound lot, the increased cost of her insurance, etc. She did not lose her license. She did, however, address the students and told them how stupid she felt, how shamed she was, and how she'd affected not only herself but her friends and family. After she was escorted out, the judge addressed the students and had a Q and A session. I left shortly after the judge began speaking.

It was real, and that was important. I'd have liked for the young man's testimonial to have been shorter, and for the actual court case to have been longer--the judge seemed like she was speed-reading her way through it. Other than that, it was well done. Made for several good conversations throughout the rest of the day.

The defense attorney was the father of one of my students. I sent her home with a couple questions for her dad; if I get answers and remember to do so, I'll update this post on Monday with that additional information.

What's Up With The Himalayan Glaciers?

The Telegraph reports:

Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.

The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world's highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.

It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at "a rapid rate", threatening floods throughout north India.

The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.

Friday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Andrew Ridgeley.

Today's question is:
Who was the district attorney in Durham, North Carolina, who wrongly accused Duke University lacrosse players of raping a stripper, and eventually lost his job because of his misconduct on the case?

Translation Services Desperately Needed!

I'm told that we have an education crisis in this country, that education is truly a national security issue. With that in mind I want to do my part to help out in whatever way I can.

The following pictures were smuggled out of a top secret facility. I can't say where. There's no telling the dangers involved, or how many lives--good lives--were lost in bringing these pictures, and the information they hold, to light.

My informant tells me that the information contained in these pictures is the secret to high-quality education. If we could just get this information and implement it, the future of our nation would be secured. The information is not complete--some was lost--but there is hope that we could, given enough time, piece together the missing information to make a coherent whole, and in the process, save the nation.

Sadly, though, the information is encoded. The cryptological and linguistic skills needed to decipher the content in these pictures is beyond my poor abilities. So I turn to you, my readers, to see if any of you is capable of tackling for your country one of the most vexatious tasks possible--translating the following into English, and explaining how to put it into use.

Remember, education is vital to our national security. Uncle Sam needs you. Now. Don't let him down.

click to enlarge

Some Are More Equal Than Others

The US military is supposed to be the great meritocracy, where excellence is the standard and performance is the only criterion. Sadly, this isn't true at the Naval Academy, where there's a significantly lower set of standards for some minorities:

According to (USNA Professor) Fleming, the admissions system is two-tiered because minority candidates have lower test scores and grades than their counterparts. In short, Fleming says that the Academy is rejecting better qualified white applicants to admit minority candidates with less impressive credentials.

The most pernicious effect of affirmative action plays out in Annapolis:

The environment is particularly toxic for talented black midshipmen...because they are perceived by some classmates as less-qualified.

And why wouldn't they be perceived thusly? Affirmative action, as practiced today, is bad enough because it legally discriminates against people on the basis of their skin color, but when you add in the cost to those it's designed to help, it's even more indefensible.

Some Parents Do Care

From an ABC News story out of the Midwest:

An Ohio mother's attempt to provide her daughters with a better education has landed her behind bars.

Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district.

I'm of two minds about this. I don't condone lying, but I can't fault a parent for trying to "do right" by her kids by getting them the best taxpayer-funded education she could.

Getting A Little Pissy With Your Colleagues

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A California university professor has been charged with peeing on a colleague's campus office door...Investigators say a dispute between Petrov and another math professor was the motive.

The Los Angeles Times says Petrov was captured on videotape urinating on the door of another professor's office on the San Fernando Valley campus. School officials had rigged the camera after discovering puddles of what they thought was urine at the professor's door.

Say it with me: Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1971.

Today's question is:
George Michael was half of the duo Wham! Who was the other half?

Education Buzz

This week's Education Buzz is posted here and includes my post about the food pantry at a local University of California campus.

My Classes Were Quiet Today

At my school there are "ante-rooms" behind our classrooms; imagine a wing with 3 classrooms on each side with two large, narrow rooms between the pairs of 3, these rooms being accessible not only from the six classrooms (4 classrooms access one ante-room, two classrooms the other) but also from one end of the wings; each wing in our school is built this way. I understand that in days past, when education money flowed freely, each department had a secretary and supplies based in those rooms!

Since I've been at school, the ante-room behind my classroom has been a sort of minefield/storage room/junk room for the entire school. For reasons I won't go into in this post, I was able to convince the school administration (it didn't take much convincing) to allow me to turn that room into a math lab. We already had the (ancient and decrepit) laptops and chairs, so the only additional cost was a few computer tables. It now looks nice and is reasonably functional.

Yesterday our vice principals came to me to ask how we in the math department "sign up" for using the lab. I explained that we don't, it's very informal. If it ever becomes a problem, maybe then we'll hang a calendar or something up in there and teachers can sign up on the calendar, but for now only a couple of us use it. Then they asked if they could use it for a vice principals meeting; it seems that periodically our district's VP's meet, and each time it's at a different school site, and this month it was our school's turn to host. I told them, "It's not my lab to grant, it belongs to the school. However, I know of no one using the lab tomorrow, so feel free." I don't know why I enjoyed the looks on their faces when I said it wasn't my lab. Maybe because that's just not the answer you would usually give to such a question, it elicits odd looks from people, I don't know--but I admit I enjoyed their response.

So today I had a couple dozen vice principals right on the other side of the door from my classes. I told my classes to keep the volume down so that we wouldn't give them any reason to open that door. One student in first period asked if I'd tell the VP's to keep it down if they got too loud, and my response was, "of course I would". The nice thing was, though, that I didn't need to, a fact I pointed out to my later classes. "The vice principals know how to use 'inside voices'," I said. I do a fairly good job of keeping my classes "contained" and on task, but I'll grant that when I allow them to, they will get loud--especially my classes that are predominantly seniors.

Not wanting to attract any undue attention, the classes were relatively quiet today. Maybe I should ask the VP's to borrow "my" lab more often :-)

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1955.

Follow-up question: in what year did Disney World in Orlando open?

Why I Didn't Watch The State of the Union Speech

Roger Kimball says it fairly well:

Like Justice Scalia, I am planning to give tonight’s State of the Union Address a pass. I am not quite ready for the 2012 campaign yet, and clearly President Obama is dusting off his clichés and contradictions for a big blow out tonight. “The economy’s in trouble, folks, but we need to spend more on EDUCATION. The United States must be more competitive, but we need to commit ourselves to green (i.e., economically ruinous) technology.” Etc. My personal stash of Dramamine just isn’t large enough. Besides, I think George Will is right: what the State of the Union is all about is the president, regardless of party, endeavoring to “stroke every erogenous zone in the electorate.” It’s a big country and the spectacle is bound to be unseemly.

State of the Union addresses have deteriorated into a parody. The president says something his people like and they all clap and cheer, he throws a bone to my people and they all stand and cheer. These speeches are like cheerleading sessions, partisan cheerleading sessions. The seating tonight is supposed to mitigate that somewhat--why does it take special seating for grown men and women to act like grown men and women? Good lord, is this the best we can come up with for a governing class?

And does anyone believe that the state of our union is sound? I'm tired of hearing that it is. What a load of crap. We're disunited, we're in deep doo-doo financially, and there are plenty of indications that we're a civilization in decline. The state of our union isn't sound, it's holding for now but in need of serious repair. If a president can't even tell the truth about what everyone knows, why should I believe anything else he has to say? It's Dante's ninth circle.

But it doesn't end when the speech is over. At least the Constitution provides some basis for the addresses themselves, cliche-filled claptrap that they've now become--but today, having lived through the hackery that is the State of the Union Address, we're also treated to the partisan response of the loyal opposition. The president gives his speech, and a member of the opposing political party (I guess it's a good thing we only have two parties) then tells the seven people in the country who are still watching TV why the president is wrong. It's almost like dignifying the SOTU speech by addressing its points!

So no, thank you. I've had enough of this for awhile.

Update, 1/27/11: Retired colonel and current US Representative from Florida Allen West gives his thoughts here. A snippet:

"I think what you saw last night was the president trying to live in two worlds. The one world is the one of reality that happened on the second of November, and you could see in his address points where he seemed more conservative than I am. But then there's the other world where he still has to appease and pacify his liberal, left base."

If I Don't Post Tomorrow, It's Because I Died.

This past Sunday was the last of my $300 worth of yoga classes, and while I enjoyed them tremendously, my weight loss has stalled and I have to try something else to lose those last 8 pounds before the end of the school year.

I tried a new class tonight, which was much better than the one I did last week. Last week's had too much "choreography" for me--I had to learn to do a bunch of things, and then do them in order, and then do that for an hour! I'd watch, and by the time I figured out somewhat what to do, it was on to something else. Way too fast for me, couldn't do it, so I left.

Tonight's class was more of an aerobic circuit-training kind of class. We jogged around the room for a few minutes, then did high knee running around the room, and then did "butt kicker" running around the room. Then we broke up into groups, each group doing something different, and rotated through each exercise. This group might be doing jumping jacks with hand weights, this group might be doing mountain-climbers, that group might be doing crunches, etc. That I could do.

For a little while.

I learned that 20 minutes of a leisurely pace on the elliptical trainer each morning when I wake up is not enough to gain or claim any cardiovascular fitness. There were a couple of times in that class tonight that I felt lightheaded enough to need to rest, that's how bad a shape I'm in. I thought it was a 30 minute class, but in reality it was 50 minutes--I left at the 27 minute mark, during a rest break. I'll know better when I go back next time, and will strive to make it 35 minutes.

This is definitely the class for me. But I can already tell I'm going to be paying for it tomorrow, mainly in the hamstrings and quadriceps. So if you don't see any posts from me tomorrow, you'll know why.

Direct Path to Citizenship Via the American Armed Forces?

I'll try to find out if such a program already exists or not, but here's an idea that Joanne Jacobs has put forth. It may not be entirely fleshed out, but it's good enough on its face to merit consideration and not just be rejected out of hand.

I think there’s a way to revive the Dream Act in 2011: Link citizenship only to military service, which Americans see as a sacrifice, dropping the link to college attendance, which most see as a subsidized benefit to the individual.

Two years of college enrollment, with no degree required, doesn’t guarantee a productive citizen. Anyone can enroll in community college, if only to take remedial classes. (Only 22 percent of full-time students earn a two-year degree in three years.) It’s much harder to qualify for the military.

As veterans, the newly legalized could use their GI benefits to pursue a college degree. I think most Americans would be happy to welcome them to citizenship.

For those who object to rewarding illegal behavior (and count me among them), this comment from Joanne strikes me as reasonable:

I’d argue that children brought here by their parents are not guilty of “criminal behavior.”

The ones who’d qualify for military service — high school graduates with clean records — will make good Americans.

What say you?

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Susanna Hoffs.

Today's question is:
In what year did Disneyland open?

What We're Doing At School This Friday

We have the Every 15 Minutes program at our school every four years. Here's what it entails:

Genuine car accident cars are brought out to the field, and the whole school goes out to watch as actual emergency response personnel act out the scenario of a drunk driving accident. Pre-trained students are also involved, and have make-up on to simulate the wounds of the accident. The "drunk driver" is checked out by the police as the firemen use the jaws of life on the car to get a student out. A lifeflight helicopter transports the "wounded" student to the hospital, where they are pronounced dead and taken to the actual morgue. Throughout the rest of the day, pre-chosen students are pulled out of class by the Grim Reaper (in the past, it was our principal in the garb) every 15 minutes--they are taken to a site where they discuss the program, write "good-bye" letters to their families as if they had really died, etc. All of this is filmed, of course, and the next day at the Every 15 Minutes Rally the whole school watches the video and the students involved, along with their parents, talk about what it was like to simulate this tragedy.

To me it's emotional abuse. If there were any evidence at all that the program saved lives, perhaps I'd be more inclined to support it, but there is none. Not one piece. To toy with the emotions of teenagers for no measurable benefit, and to take two school days to do so--well, I've already said I find it manipulative and abusive.

That's a very long lead-in to what's going on this Friday at school. I quote from the informational letter that was emailed to us today. It's from the Traffic Safety Awareness Program, and carries the logos of the County of Sacramento, the California Office of Traffic Safety, and the Sacramento Law Enforcement Chaplaincy:

Real DUI Court in Schools is an innovative strategy for helping reduce community alcohol problems and improve traffic safety. The program “Choices & Consequences: Know the Truth” informs high school students about the risks of driving under the influence through practical education. Altering the attitudes of teen drivers is fundamental to changing their behavior. To achieve this objective, a robust, multifaceted approach to solving the problem of driving under the influence is required.

Conducting Real DUI court proceedings in Sacramento County high schools provides students with the opportunity to directly witness the legal consequences of drinking and driving, such as the defendant’s arrest, detention, and imposed fines and penalties. Students will also learn about the role and decisions of the judicial branch of the government. Allowing students to witness actual DUI sentencing hearings that go through our legal system every day gives them a memorable experience they can keep with them as a practical reference for the future. The information provided will help students make informed decisions should they ever come face to face with this situation.

This self-contained program is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. We provide the lighting,stage, courtroom structure and props. The program begins with a dynamic video on the consequences of driving under the influence provided by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) followed by a powerful presentation from a victim of a DUI or DUI offender. The transition is seamless as the court staff takes the stage and the bailiff calls the court to order. The residing judge will preside over a real case, with a real defendant, resulting in an actual sentence. (boldface mine--Darren)

Students have the opportunity to watch the defending and prosecuting attorneys deliberate over the DUI offender’s sentence, as well as hear the judge’s verdict. Once the verdict has been read the students are invited to ask any question they have about the subject and the hearing they just witnessed.

Real DUI Court in Schools, “Choices & Consequences” is a DUI prevention program funded by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic SafetyAdministration. It brings together the best resources of the Sacramento County Superior Court, Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and the Law Enforcement Chaplaincy-Sacramento and MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).

As this is real and not fake, and as it doesn't needlessly toy with kids' emotions, I'm inclined to be more receptive to it than I am to Every 15 Minutes. I don't know what, if any, track record this program has, but as E15M has no measurable effect on reducing DUI's at schools that host the program, this Real DUI Court In Schools program cannot do any worse.

All juniors and seniors at my school will witness/participate in this program on Friday. I'll be there for at least the first part of it, as my entire 1st period class is seniors.

Another Reason To Have A Professional Man-crush on Thomas Sowell

This interview is full of tidbits about the trade deficit, about manufacturing jobs, about debt--in other words, this interview itself is a great economics primer.

Ending Global Warming Cheaply

Assuming that global warming actually exists and is a bad thing for humanity, one (not disinterested) PhD has determined the following:

Conclusion: Saving the environment using nuclear power could be cheap and worth doing.

I'm all about nuclear power. So is Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace.

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Davenport (this is the only term for a sofa/couch that my nana ever used).

Today's question, for lovers of 80s music, is:
Who was the lead singer for The Bangles?

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question, the last in OJ Simpson Week, is:
The Palace Station is on Sahara Avenue.

Today's question is:
What trademarked name (e.g., Kleenex, Xerox, or googling) became genericized to mean sofa; it's an old term most commonly used in the US Midwest and Northeast?

From the RotLC Archives, on this Blogiversary Day

From 16 months ago, Why I Don't Support A "Public Option" In Health Care. It's very light on the health care part, and heavier on the reasoning behind limited government.

Random Thoughts on Thinking vs. Feeling

From The Speculist comes this comment about the 1927 science fiction movie Metropolis:

Because it deals with a murderous robot and an upper class exploiting a working class, Metropolis is often viewed as a warning about technology or capitalism run amok. However, I think such characterizations have more to do with making the film fit into neat categories than they do with articulating the philosophical message at the heart of the story. That message, which is repeated throughout the film, is that the heart must be the mediator between the mind and the hand. When the heart does not act as a mediator, suffering is the result.

Then there's this Walter Williams commentary over at Wall Street Journal Online:

He earned his doctorate in 1972 from UCLA, which had one of the top economics departments in the country, and he says he "probably became a libertarian through exposure to tough-mined professors"—James Buchanan, Armen Alchian, Milton Friedman—"who encouraged me to think with my brain instead of my heart. I learned that you have to evaluate the effects of public policy as opposed to intentions."

Both brain and heart, in moderation. What's the correct balance in this circumstance?

"In 1794, Congress appropriated $15,000 to help some French refugees," he says. In objection, "James Madison stood on the House floor and said he could not take to lay his finger on that article in the Constitution that allows Congress to take the money of its constituents for the purposes of benevolence. Well, if you look at the federal budget today, two-thirds to three-quarters of it is for the purposes of benevolence."

I'm reminded of this Davy Crockett story, although there's debate as to whether it's true or apocryphal.

To bring this around to our current political system, conservatives are on the "thinking" side of the spectrum and liberals are on the "feeling" side of the spectrum--this helps explain why liberals go ballistic when you point out the flaws in their feel-good plans. Balance is what's needed, balance between thinking and feeling, between brain and heart.