Personal Musings category archive

My Wachovia branch is not even flying the Wells Fargo flag yet and already I dislike Wells and am considering going through the hassle of changing banks.

Am I the only person who finds the phrase “smart TV” to be an oxymoron?

Why does the rose with the sharpest thorns always get the worst case of black spot?

My little brother’s retirement luncheon was today.

Baseball.

In the Guardian, Walt Gardner looks at the history of “pay for performance” for teachers.

Early in my career with the railroad, I learned that, if one employee contravenes a policy, the employee is likely culpable; if the majority of employees contravenes a policy, the policy is likely wrong.

Aside from the overtly criminal (embezzlers, ponzi scheme managers, and other fraudsters), most working persons do not go to work planning to defraud their employers by performing their jobs badly. They may be intending other forms of misconduct while on duty and on the property, but they aren’t thinking something like, “I’ll just stock all the merchandise on the wrong shelves today.”

I’ve long had qualms about “pay for performance” for teachers and most of the other education “reform” schemes based on testing. As my mother, a math teacher, once said to me, “How can we expect them to read if there isn’t a magazine in the house?”

The reports of “teaching to the test” and fudging students’ scores are so numerous and so frequent as to indicate to me not a failure of school teachers and administrators, but the failure of the strategy.

Pay-for-performance began in England in about 1710, when salaries were based on test scores in reading, writing and arithmetic. The rationale was that it would help keep students from poor families in school, where they could learn the basics. The plan became part of the Revised Education Code in 1862, and remained on the books for more than 30 years.

The trouble was that the strategy sucked the creative life out of classrooms, as teachers became obsessed with the code. When it became apparent that the approach demeaned education, it was dropped in the 1890s. Pay-for-performance re-emerged briefly in Canada in 1876, but it ran into similar difficulties and was terminated in 1883.

Afterthought:

Ever notice how many bad ideas’ reason for existence is summed up in, “But we have to do something?“

Someone who must deny science to protect his or her faith has not faith.

The writers for Criminal Minds are some sick puppies to come up with the plots they do.

But Garcia runs Linux, so they are forgiven.

Listening to this, I wonder why the phrase “in this day and age” in a statement so often presages something blitheringly idiotic?

Depressing.

AT&T Inc. (T) surged in early U.S. trading after agreeing to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) for about $39 billion in cash and stock to create America’s largest mobile-phone company.

I’ve been with T-Mobile since before they were T-Mobile (they became T-Mobile when Deutsche Telekom bought Voicestream).

Their network wasn’t as big as the networks of some of the other carriers, but their customer service and support have always been excellent and their pricing reasonable, and roaming works when out of the network.

In contrast, At&T is AT&T because Southwestern Bell had to change its name to Cingular had to buy the AT&T name to escape its reputation for service.

Wonder whether my Android works with Credo?

Bagels and pimento cheese.

Yums.

Literalist Christians are their own worst advertisement.

In fact, words fail them. Or they fail words. Or something.

Frankly, I think literalists should be required to learn Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, so they could be literature literalists. Maybe then will they get a clue (emphasis added):

The 2011 translation of the New International Version Bible, or NIV, does not change pronouns referring to God, who remains “He” and “the Father.” But it does aim to avoid using “he” or “him” as the default reference to an unspecified person.

(snip)

Before the new translation even hit stores, it drew opposition from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization that believes women should submit to their husbands in the home and only men can hold some leadership roles in the church.

(snip)

At issue is how to translate pronouns that apply to both genders in the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts but have traditionally been translated using masculine forms in English.

(The “Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” could probably better be described as the “keep ’em in the kitchen and bedroom” party.)

Follow the link to see some samples from the text. Some of them are, indeed, awkward, but, really, this is much ado about not much of anything, for God did not spake in Elizabethan English in the first place.

Republicans are fond of saying “The federal government is broke.” I just heard one say it on the Magickal Talking Box.

They don’t admit that they broke it.

How long before Wisconsin Republicans seize the radio and television stations (at least the ones that aren’t already Fox), declare martial law, and announce the coup?

If every shopper returned his or her grocery cart, rather than leaving it in the parking lot, the effort would likely reduce obesity by 9.63%

Spring must be near.

The joggers are in bloom.

The Oldsmobile was a middle-of-the-road middle of the price range car, sort of a Pontiac without any of that GTO pizzazz.

The Oldsmobile is no more. So too is your father’s Republican Party.

I believe that many persons, especially older persons (a demographic that includes me) who consider themselves Republicans (a demographic that excludes me) don’t realize how little today’s Republican Party shares with the Republican Party of their upbringing, the party that included Everett Dirksen, John Heinz, and Edward Brooke, just to mention a few.

I sense a longing for their fathers’s Oldsmobiles among leading members of the professional commentariat, especially the two Davids (Brooks and Broder).

Broder, indeed, has given a name to an condition: High Broderism, a syndrome which includes the willingness to sacrifice moral outcomes on the altar of the appearance of conciliation. As the Booman points out, High Broderism postulates that compromise is a one-way street: Democrats give; Republicans take.

Nothing I have read recently so illustrates how delusional is their faith in the existence of their fathers’ Oldsmobiles than Shaun Mullen’s remembrance of Russell W. Peterson, Republican Governor of Delaware from 1969 to 1973. Shaun’s conclusion:

Russ Peterson was 94 when he died on Monday night at his Wilmington home. It is sadly ironic that as a moderate Republican he would have stood no chance of being nominated today in a state where Christine O’Donnell was the party’s 2010 standard bearer, let alone become an environmental torchbearer for a party that eschews moderation and is an avowed enemy of the environment.

Several years ago, before it became a real prospect, I heard someone propose, “General Motors should just stop making Oldsmobiles and see whether anyone notices.” (Eventually, General Motors did and car buyers didn’t, but that’s another story.)

The Republican Party no longer makes Oldsmobiles and lots of folks still haven’t noticed.

80 Fahrenheits, open windows, and short-sleeve shirts in mid-February are Just Not Right in This Part of the World.

If a bad film is released in 3D, does that make it three times as bad or only half again as bad?

Last night, I saw Neil Sedaka (who is by any standard a great talent and a classy guy) on an Infomercial selling oldies from the 50s and 60s.

He looks like Ed Asner.

But he still sounds like Neil Sedaka.