Personal Musings category archive

Where’s my jet pack?

“Plain vanilla” is not a perjorative.

It’s a compliment.

The media, even the funny pages, have Memorial Day tributes to those who have served and, perhaps, fallen for this country. The radio is playing patriotic music. Flags are everywhere, outnumbered only by the “Big Sale” signs.

Sad thoughts interspersed with beach-goers and shoppers and jingoism.

Now consider those (or their sons or daughters or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers) who were sent into harm’s way and perhaps did not return for unjust or fabricated cause.

Is their sacrifice greater or lesser?

I would argue that it is greater, for they have served with honor those who betrayed their honor.

Persons like to prattle about speaking truth to power.

Mark Memorial Day by resolving to demand truth from power.

I have been feeling none of the triumphalism that seems to have greeted the killing of Osama bin Laden.

I do not regret it, not that my regrets are here or there, but celebration seems rather a wrong reaction.

I think this, from@ericfiddler on Twitter via Mr. Feastingonroadkill, encapsulates why.

Remember on Sept 12, 2001 when you saw people in some places abroad celebrating death? Exactly. Don’t be like that.

My mother, who retired from teaching over two decades ago, once said that the biggest change she had observed during her career was this:

When she started, if little Johnny got into trouble, the parent would call and say, “What did the little bastard do today?” (only she would never have said “bastard”).

By the time she retired, that same phone call would start, “How dare you mistreat my little darling. He didn’t do it.”

It appears to have gotten much worse.

A school official speaks out. A nugget:

Members of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1979, now constitute most parents of school-age children. As an educator, I can identify a typical Gen X parent immediately.

Gen Xers orchestrate every move of their preschoolers, from perfect play dates and obsessively healthy diets, to instructional flashcards and hypoallergenic socks.

Once school starts, Gen X parents may become upset to discover other students doing more advanced work than their own, demanding a meeting with the principal about why the teacher is “letting their child fall behind.” Of course the parents have done their research, identified the problem, and it’s clearly the school’s fault that their child is “underperforming” — in kindergarten.

Indeed, a Gen X parent holds her child’s self-esteem as something to be protected at any cost. Gone are the days of the “helicopter parent,” hovering obsessively to make sure little Taylor is prepared for success. Gen Xers are “snowplow parents,” knocking all potential obstacles out of their children’s paths to pack their young résumés with successes.

I have long thought that parents take themselves and their children far too seriously. If you get the kids to adulthood so that they can be responsible, moral, and functioning citizens and persons, that’s doing a damned good job. Anything else is gravy.

As someone–I wish I could remember who–once said to me, “When you’re raising kids, if you do one more thing right than you do wrong, you’re going to be a good parent.”

Thank heavens that’s over.

Now our media can go back to covering important things, such as LIndsey Charlie Paris Keira Hilton Sheen Kim Knightly Snookidashian.

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?