edX and the Future of the Human Race

My alma mater is no longer dipping its toes in the uncertain waters of the 21st century--it has stripped off its clothes and taken the full plunge. The University of California's flagship campus at Berkeley has joined MIT and Harvard in the X University Consortium to deliver college courses for free to anyone who has access to the internet. The project is known as edX and was created as a not-for-profit online-learning collaborative between those two world-famous private schools from Cambridge, Massachusetts. UC Berkeley, of course, is a public school. The UC/CSU system was once the jewel of California, offering the finest and most affordable higher education of any state in the union. I was one of those ordinary citizens whose life was transformed by this remarkable, visionary creation. I earned my undergraduate degree at Cal and my teaching credential at Cal State Hayward (now CSU East Bay) in the years 1977-1984, which really marked the end of the golden era. Costs soared after that, and budgets were slashed, but more importantly the belief in the dream, the political will needed to grow and improve faded from the public consciousness. Anti-intellectualism is now in the fore, and the government commitment to public education for all citizens is under fire by a new breed of "every man for himself" yahoos who seek only their own hegemony and lack any sense of social responsibility. The Golden State has lost its luster, and has only itself to blame--its citizens gobbled up the pablum served by this new breed of corporate fat cats and their army of dupes.

Throughout history education has been a luxury reserved for the upper classes. The idea of universal education is a recent one, only emerging in the last century. At the time of the Second World War, about half of school-age kids in the US finished high school. My dad, for example, quit school at 16 to work, then joined the Marines a year later in 1948. In my own generation (I was born in 1959), dropping out was almost unthinkable, and damn rare as well. I've worked in the state's secondary schools for 28 years, and I've seen plenty of failure, but illiteracy is so unusual as to be remarkable, and the vast majority of kids complete at least some kind of high school program even if they don't earn a traditional diploma. The schools are actually victims of their own success--high school is taken for granted. This extraordinary accomplishment of the modern world, the mass education of tens of millions on a global scale, is not seen for the near-miracle that it is. Consequently, we have neglected to view it with the necessary awe and respect and have failed to infuse it with a proper spirit of growth and renewal. Schools are political battlegrounds instead, and every election cycle sees a new batch of politicos and talking heads determined to undermine what's been built for no reason other than to serve their selfish ambitions.

The internet has been likened to the printing press for its transformative effect on society. Luther owed a lot to Gutenberg, actually, can you imagine the Reformation without that new communication technology? If we are to bring the benefits of education to the masses, the brick-and-mortar school will have to evolve. The internet, most people forget, was a government creation. Its existence is a continuing collaboration between public and private entities, proof that we can work together and build something that benefits all of society. I love the delicious irony of survivalist and anarchist websites--what could be more communal and collective than the World Wide Web?

I'm proud of my beloved mother. They've seen the future, and it's not all about dorm rooms and football. When amazing things like The Khan Academy are out there free for anyone with a modem, the message is loud and clear: change or die. The dream of a university education available to everyone may never be fully realized, but that does not mean that the goal is not a good one. Too many people in the world lack clean water and adequate food, and live in constant fear and want, and what's worse, see little hope of change. I like to think it's those people--the oppressed and dispossessed--who will ultimately benefit from things like edX. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I believe a new generation of the traditionally under-served and under-represented who get the chance to succeed will not forget their roots and will use their knowledge and opportunities to help those who are less fortunate. That was once the ethic of this country, and I think it can be again. The creation of a free on-line university education is a baby step, nothing more. It will take more than that to see the dream come true. But all journeys have to start somewhere. UC Berkeley's motto is Fiat lux, taken straight from Genesis, chapter one, verse three: Let there be light.

Indeed.

O'Connor's Three Laws of Science

I often tell my students about O'Connor's Three Laws of Science. I was inspired by Newton, of course, as his Three Laws of Motion are the jump-off point for many explorations of mechanical phenomena. My laws are more abstract, and are about the nature of science itself, not about a specific area of study. Number One: all measurements are uncertain. I like to say the corollary to Number One is find the degree of uncertainty you are willing to live with. If you are rough-framing a house with 2x4s, being off now and then by a quarter of an inch is no big deal. If you are building cabinets, however, being off a quarter of an inch is a catastrophe. Measure as precisely as you need to. And please don't tell me the answer with the eight decimal places your calculator gave you! People on a diet care about pounds, not ounces. Number Two: science is a description of nature, not an explanation. As Alfred Korzybski opined, "the map is not the territory." Science does not concern itself with Truth, and at least, in my view, it should not. Leave that to philosophers and holy men. They can talk all they want about the subjective and the mystical, none of those things can withstand the rigors of experimentation. Science requires repeatability--if you can't get my results then one of us is wrong. I don't mean to say that subjective experiences aren't real, they just aren't amenable to analysis. Scientific "truths" are contextual, that is, they are only as good as the paradigm they fit within. (I use that word in the sense that Thomas Kuhn did in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) All experiments operate within a theory of how nature works. Scientists don't investigate randomly--they look for things they believe they "should" find, that is, what the theory (or dominant paradigm) predicts. Or they look at anomalies, things that don't fit the theory, and try to enlarge their understanding so that these outliers will fit within the current models. Only when the paradigm fails to produce satisfying (i.e., consistent) results does a "revolution" occur. Think Copernicus, or Einstein. Nature doesn't change, only our way of seeing it. Number Three: correlation does not imply causality. The Romans would have said "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." That's a logical fallacy, and the Greeks (Rome's teachers) would have drilled that notion into their rhetoric students. Just because A happens after B does not mean that A causes B to happen. The sun rises after my alarm goes off. If I turn off my clock, will that plunge the world into darkness? We see this sort of thinking every day, especially in politics. So-and-so got elected and then the economy (or whatever) did this-or-that, obviously so-and-so deserves the credit or blame. I remember when everyone got excited that sunspot cycles appeared to correlate with drought in California. That's it! Explanation! Mystery solved! Until the drought persisted, of course, and we were left once again with the complexity of the global climate system.

So that's it. Science in a nutshell. And I like to end my talk with my favorite line from Shakespeare:

               There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
               Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
               (Hamlet, Act I, scene V).

To me, this means never underestimate nature. The vastness of the universe should awe us and keep us humble. Science is a product of the human mind, and is thus subject to all the vagaries and frailties of humankind. It is also the most powerful and most fruitful of all human endeavors. Without science, I would like to note, religions would have nothing to talk about. The pope, for example, spends a lot of time on birth control. The pill wasn't invented by priests, man. I'm not religious, as you might imagine, but I also don't really see the supposed conflict between science and religion. After all, religion is about things that cannot be measured or experimented upon. Religions don't have "testable" questions. If people want to believe that tablets with God's Laws on them were handed out to Moses or discovered by Joseph Smith, that's all fine and dandy. Science can't respond to such notions because they cannot be falsified. Many scientists possess religious faith (like Newton, for example), and that seems to make the point moot, don't you think? A belief in the afterlife won't prevent anyone from determining the chemical composition of nebula, and reading the gospels won't stop a polymerase chain reaction.

Sorry for the long-winded rant, I got inspired this morning when I dropped in the on the website BETTER EXPLAINED and read their delightful thumbnail sketch of Bayes' Theorem. Good stuff, check it out!

Idiots in Sacramento

Lots of people don't know that asbestos is a naturally-occurring mineral. It is often mined from serpentine rocks. Serpentine is the State Rock of California. You have probably seen road cuts containing this lovely grey-green stuff in your travels throughout the state. The rock is intimately associated with the unique flora of California, as many species are endemic due to the presence of serpentine soils. Serpentines are also associated with gold-bearing rocks, and we all know how important gold is to the history and culture of the Golden State. (Gold is the State Mineral.)

It seems State Senator Gloria Romero has a problem with this. She's sponsoring a bill that would strip serpentine of its State Rock status. Apparently serpentine is bad because asbestos comes from it. Never mind that EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRIAL MATERIAL WE USE COMES FROM ROCKS. I guess ground is bad, too, because oil comes out of it. Substances are not good or bad. They are what they are. Oil isn't bad. Neither is aluminum, or copper, or chromium, or clay, or gypsum, or quartz, or talc, or asbestos. How we choose, as a society, to extract, use, and dispose of these things is what makes them a benefit or a danger. Most things, in the real world, are a little of both, aren't they? Didn't we learn this stuff in school? We're grownups now, aren't we? You'd think our "leaders" in Sacramento would have better things to do, like fund our schools, fix our roads, balance our budget--you know, actual work.

You, madam, are an idiot.

The Twenty-twelve Touch

If you think the world is going to end in 2012, I've got a proposition for you:

Gimme all your stuff. You won't be needing it.

You heard me:

Gimme all your stuff. You won't be needing it.

You won't be needing your bank accounts, stock portfolios, vacation homes, jewerly, furs, sports cars or sailboats. You needn't fret. Here at Ten Pound Press we are prepared to take these things off your hands ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE! Don't be burdened with luxuries during the apocalypse. Pass them on to others before the "end of days" so you can be FREE TO ENJOY THE CATACLYSM!

Some of you believe that Twenty-twelve is not a "doomsday" but a New Age. Hey--we're cool with that! Imagine how awkward and out-of-place you will feel around all these Enlightened Beings when you are still chained to your wealth and personal property. DON'T LET IT HAPPEN. Get rid of all that crap. Break your materialistic chains!

Fortunately, you've come to the right place. TPP maintains a mature and sophisticated world-view--we accept all philosphies, religions, creeds and belief systems. No old-school prejudices hold us back from separating suckers and their money. We are as American as P.T. Barnum!

(Stay tuned for our upcoming solution to the "Rapture Racket.")

08-08-08? Feh!

The Olympics are here. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooring!

Other than Giants prospect Nate Schierholz playing on the USA baseball team, I have zero interest in this spectacle. Synchronized swimming? Beach volleyball? Is this a joke? And what's this about REMOVING softball? What, not enough time for kayaking? Give it up. This is the most expensive put-on in history. I'd be interested in stuff like tae-kwan-do and Graeco-Roman wrestling, but Americans want to see basketball. Like there isn't enough damn basketball in the world. And soccer (er, football). Didn't we just suffer through the damn World Cup and the Euro Cup? Not enough, eh? And how about tennis? Wimbledon just doesn't cut it anymore, I guess.

And don't get me started on China. And that pompous ass Bob Costas. And Pepsi-fucking-cola. Read Dave Zirin and get back to me.

Even THESE guys think this way

What do you think when you hear RAND Corporation? Do you think "serious Establishment geeks?" How about "conservative think-tank?" I doubt very seriously that you conjure up "liberal elites" or "out-of-touch eggheads" or "radical anti-Americans" or "un-patriotic intellectuals."

That's because these guys ARE serious, ARE conservative, ARE Establishment and most certainly ARE NOT "un-patriotic." They are smart. They do research. They are paid to think. Paid with your tax dollars.

Here is their website. Go visit. Come back and tell me if you think these guys are full of shit.

Here's why: they recently released a report that said, in essence, that the War on Terror is failing. Yeah, that's right. It isn't working and it won't work. That's what the RAND Corporation said. Not me. Not some "liberal elite" or some "wimpy Democrat" or some "hippie peacenik." The fookin' RAND Corporation.

Don't believe me? Read the fecking report.

News release 7/29.

Summary (pdf) here.

Full report (pdf) here.

Have a nice day.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

I can understand why mainstream media types fear (and loathe) bloggers. We do what they do without restraint. We are not subject to editing, oversight, deadlines or the threat of a paycheck being pulled. But Bob Costas has gone too far:

''But it's one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother's basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they're a pathetic get-a-life loser, but now that pathetic get-a-life loser can piggyback onto someone who actually has some level of professional accountability and they can be comment No. 17 on Dan Le Batard's column or Bernie Miklasz' column in St. Louis. That, in most cases, grants a forum to somebody who has no particular insight or responsibility. Most of it is a combination of ignorance or invective.''

This Miami Herald article would have escaped my notice except, of course, for a blogger. There is a very smart and engaging blog that I read regularly (and sometimes comment on) called Only Baseball Matters. The post linked to another fine blog called Baseball Think Factory which then links to the source. I have been on-line since 1993. Remember USENET? I do. There are--no doubt--lots of idiots and losers on the 'net. So much of the "comments" section of any forum is blather, nothing more than the barstool rantings of angry drunks. In that narrow sense, Mr. Costas has a point. But he cannot--he must not--paint us all with the same brush. Too many wonderful voices have emerged from the chaos of cyberspace (how about Dave Zirin or Alexander Cockburn?). Funny thing: Costas is raging about "professional accountability" yet he delivers a carpet-bombing screed against an entire class of people without a shred of evidence, careful thought, or research. I wonder if those fat paychecks from the huge multi-media conglomerates he works for have distorted his perspective. Listen up Bob: time to get off the leather lounger the networks gave you for the Olympics and start noticing that far, far too many of your colleagues are narrow-minded, short-sighted egomaniacs with a well-paying national forum for their prejudiced, self-important drivel. Start paying attention to "alternative" media, pal, because the fascist outfits you shill for are swallowing up every other avenue of individual, creative expression left in this soul-less capitalist mess we call a country. In twenty years, if you and your ilk have their way, the only free thought left in the world will be a drug-addled half-senile ex-blogger with a mimeograph machine salvaged from the dump, printing broadsheets on his dwindling collection of grocery bags.

¡VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!

We don't get it.

There's a telling moment in the grand jury testimony of Barry Lamar Bonds. The testimony, given in December of 2003, has recently been "unsealed" and can be downloaded in its entirety. In fact, an interesting sports law blog (yes, they have such things) called "Shyster Ball" does some laywerly analysis of what the Big Fella had to say in response to the prosecutors' questions. Before you ask--yes, I read not only the whole testimony but the analysis as well. I am not an attorney. If Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy didn't cover it on LAW & ORDER, then I'm in the dark. I read the stuff to see what Barry had to say. Now, Mr. Bonds is an unusual character, even in the world of sports. Notoriously prickly and hostile to the media, a Bonds press event was nonetheless more revealing and interesting than most because he was apt to say almost anything. Much of the time he said very pointed and truthful things, which went over the heads of the reporters and the fans because they weren't the kind of things he was supposed to say. Case in point: in the 1996 off-season, Matt Williams was traded. Fans loved Matt, and they wanted the new GMs head (Brian Sabean). Reporters loved the story, and fanned the flames all year. Turns out 1997 was a very good year--the Giants surprised everyone with an NL West title, and Sabean's new boys (like Jeff Kent and J.T. Snow) played a huge role. In the champagne-soaked locker room, reporters gathered around Bonds to ask his thoughts on winning the title. He, of course, was supposed to say "it's great, man, we all love each other and we stuck together and worked hard and blah, blah, blah." Jock talk. Reporters love it. Fans love it. Instead, Bonds said "I think you guys owe Brian Sabean an apology for all that stuff you wrote saying we were gonna be a lousy team and he was doing a lousy job." They were bewildered. They ran away from Barry as soon as he was done to find a more amenable fellow. I loved the moment. It was the first time I really appreciated the off-field Bonds. Candor? From an athlete? Pinch me! Which brings me back to reality, and the point. In the questioning of Bonds, the role of Mr. Greg Anderson was pivotal to the prosecution. Grilling Barry about his relationship to Anderson, they ask Bonds if the Giants were involved in their training regimen. Barry answers "no way." Surprised--apparently--the attorneys press the point, and Bonds explains that "we" (he and Anderson) don't "trust" baseball or the ballclub. Asked to explain, Bonds describes how he was "born in this game." He goes on to say:

Believe me. It's a business. Last time I played baseball was in college. I work for a living now.

I have no idea whether the testimony Bonds gave will get him convicted of perjury. From this amateur's point of view, I can't imagine how. There's nothing there. But, as I said, I'm not a lawyer. I am, however, a sports fan. And there is something powerful about Bonds' statement that I think all of us--fans, media types, casual observers--should think about. Sports is a business. It is "work" for those practitioners of it. They are PROFESSIONALS. That makes it different, for them, in a fundamental way. Fans, and in particular media types, try to frame sports in the same terms as Little League, or high school, or other amateur endeavors. This is a crock. Putting on a show for the local community theatre is not the same as being a movie star. Fudging on your tax returns is not the accounting ledgerdemain mastered by Enron. There is a difference, not only in scale and scope, but substance as well. John D. MacDonald was credited with a snappy comeback that is germane here. When fans or casual aquaintances found out who he was, they would inevitably say "I've always wanted to be a writer" (I'd have been guilty of that!). Mr. MacDonald would reply "Funny, I've always wanted to be a brain surgeon." Fantasy and reality. For thousands, even millions, playing a sport professionally is a fantasy. Being human, we project our values on to that fantasy. We refuse to believe it is NOT what is is, but that it is something else. If we could step away from our fantasies and see what the reality is, we probably would forget all about Barry Bonds, perjury, PEDs, etc., and let these men get on with their jobs. I love watching talented, hard-working chaps perform their panoply of skills. I have no illusions about them. Some of them are wonderful folks, I'm sure. But I'm not going to tell them how to do their jobs. I expect they know. And I refuse to project my fantasies and failed-jock angst on to them, any more than I'll tell the brain surgeon how he should go about cutting in to my skull.


(BTW, for baseball talk, check out my SFG blog: http://raisingmattcain.blogspot.com/)

The Ides of Baseball

I'm not going to read the Mitchell Report and look forward to it like I would a colonoscopy. The Mitchell Report is not about baseball, and it is not about "performance-enhancing durgs" (whatever they are). It is about a nation obsessed with non-issues, it is about politics and posturing, and it is about punishing rich, famous athletes for their failure to be our heroes. In other words, it is about us. Athletes are not heroes. They are athletes. Some of them may be heroic individuals, much like housewives or teachers or carpenters might be heroes. Just because some person gets a lot of money for entertaining us does not mean that we can 1) take away their rights, privacy or dignity and 2) hold them to a higher standard of conduct than anyone else. Baseball is a business, a six billion dollar business. Young men put their bodies on the line for fame, glory, and yes, money. Flesh--the bodies of athletes--is the currency of professional sports. Young men trade this currency--theirs, their very own flesh--for money. Specifically, a shot, a chance, at a big payoff. The real crime is NOT that the cut-throat competition for the very few spots on a big-league roster encourages the use of chemical supplements, the real crime is that many thousands of youngsters fail to make the pros, and no one gives a shit that many of them sacrificed their bodies, their schooling, and their youth on a broken dream. Professional athletes are just that: professional. They don't have to be told how to run their professional lives. If they can take HGH to help them recover from an injury and give their employers and fans what is expected of them, then what is the problem? If we really care, I mean REALLY CARE about an athlete's health, then why don't we set up a panel of experts? Scientists, doctors, nutritionists, exercise physiologists, psychologists and the like could make recommendations to the sports world on the proper care and feeding of an athletic body (and mind). What drugs can be used safely and in what doses, what kinds of expectations about injury and recovery are realistic, and, most important, what does it take to be healthy upon retirement. Take a look at middle-aged football players: too many of them are basket cases who can barely walk and talk. Do fans and owners care? Hardly. The national hysteria about steroids is a lot of nonsense. Code words like "the integrity of the game" are thrown around by media types and politicos who happily consume a packaged product that hides all its true warts, and fans suck on the same stupid crack pipe of ignorance, pretending that their "heroes" are pure and beautiful because they can't or won't find real heroes in their lives. If anyone thinks that drug testing will "clean up" sports and "restore the game," I've got some Enron stock you might want to invest in.

And we're in bed with these bastards?

Check out this NY Times story (which was carried by other newspapers including the Sacramento Bee today):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/world/middleeast/16saudi.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

These clowns are our ALLIES. They FLOG people. They flog the VICTIMS of rape. The VICTIMS!! These Islamic "leaders" and "clerics" are PHONIES. Corrupt, stupid LOSERS. Flogging the VICTIM of a RAPE? Are you kidding me?

I wonder if GW, when he's hangin' with his buddy "Prince" Bandar al-Saud, asks him, "yo, Bandy, how's that floggin' thing work? Does it keep the damn liberals off yer back?"

Why aren't we bombing the damn House of Saud into the Stone Age where they belong?

Go Bears!

Thirty years ago I was a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley. I was lucky. My parents loved me, supported me, encouraged me. I was taught that learning and scholarship were virtues, that a college education was a noble aspiration. The State of California built a university system that was the envy of the world. The parents of the post-WWII and post-Korea generations were determined to send their kids to college. If they were lucky enough to live in the Golden State they had a myriad of high-quality, affordable choices. Affordable. That is the point of public universities--to give middle class and working class kids a chance. I probably don't have to tell anyone that the cost of a college education has so outstripped the rise in wages that fewer and fewer kids get the opportunities that those of a previous generation took for granted. And no one gives a shit. Thousands of young people are convinced they will never afford a university degree. They have given up hope, that most precious of all commodities. They are wrong. They can still do it, it will just be harder and harder. The federal and state money so generously passed out in the 60's and 70's has mostly dried up. Kids and parents have to scramble more. They have to take on more debt. They have to start savings accoounts for college in utero. This is a national disgrace. Every deserving child in high school needs to KNOW, to KNOW, not to guess, that they will be able to afford a college education. Why in goddamned hell do I pay my goddamn taxes? I'll tell you why: so our schools can be the envy of the world again. So PUBLIC universities remain affordable for the general PUBLIC. I read the news and I see what people get pissed off about. They get pissed off about a lot of pointless shit. I'll tell you what I am pissed off about. I'm pissed off about our universities in California not being treated like the jewels they are. I'm pissed off that tuition rates are climbing faster than health care costs. I'm pissed off that no one else is pissed off about it! I didn't expect this to become a rant, in fact, I wrote about my alma mater because I had a wonderful opportunity last night. I attended a local event honoring top students, and presented a California Alumni Association scholarship to a young lady who is attending Berkeley in the fall. I was surprised by how important this event became to me. I shouldn't have been. Going to Cal was the best thing that ever happened to me. I met my beautiful wife there. I made the best friends I've ever had there. I turned my degree into a profession that has allowed me to live comfortably in a place I want to be. I grew up. I became a man. And I embraced the world of learning that Berkeley so vibrantly exemplifies. I want every kid to have that chance. "Fiat Lux" is what it says on the Berkeley motto. "Let there be light." Indeed.
prid. Kal. Iun.

30 May

Before our national craze for turning holidays in to 3-day weekends, Memorial Day was on the 30th of May. One of the most admirable men serving in the Senate, Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, is an advocate for returning Memorial Day to a fixed date. The argument is that a 3-day weekend is a 3-day weekend is a 3-day weekend. A fixed date means people might actually notice the date and remember what it is for. As much as I like 3-day weekends, it is hard to argue the point. My only beef with Memorial Day is that a lot of innocent people are killed in wars, but Memorial Day is for honoring fallen soldiers. Never mind that thousands more civilians are killed than soldiers, and that soldiers, by definition, risk their lives performing their soldiering tasks. Obviously those who serve should be honored, but I cannot believe the victims of war deserve less. War has other costs, too. Specifically, dollar costs. I have generally avoided politics on this site, but dollars transcend that. Hell, everyone wants to spend dollars or have dollars spent on their behalf. The War in Iraq costs many dollars. Scroll down to "National Priorities Project" on the left below all my links. That is a lot of dollars. Enough dollars to fund almost 21 MILLION college scholarships. Like I said, that is a lot of dollars.

Wonderful things & speaking ill

Yes, it is BOING BOING! They call themselves "A Directory of Wonderful Things." This site is one of those internet time sinks where you say to yourself "what's up on Boing Boing?" and an hour later you have forgotten why you sat at the computer table. My hook this a.m. was the article about the death of the "Reverend" Jerry Falwell. I'm not sure it qualifies as "wonderful" to speak ill of the dead, but the "Rev." Falwell was an unusually polarizing character. I have a hard time assigning the title of "Rev." to someone who made a career of attacking people and cloaking his viciousness in the "respectability" of the cloth, but there it is. He was called "Reverend" and held three honorary doctorates in addition to a degree from a Baptist college. I'm an atheist myself, and that makes me a member of a distinct minority, a group of people who are classified by their "not-belief" as opposed to their belief. I mean, are you an "a-socialist" if you are a capitalist? Am I an "a-Dodger fan" because I root for the Giants? Ridiculous. I choose not to swallow the peculiar mythology of our culture, namely, the fellow on The Cross being a God, and suddenly I'm an "a-theist." Fine. I prefer to think of myself as rational. If you think there's an omniscient, immortal, all-powerful being somewhere who gives a flying fuck about your tiny little life (and who cares about everyone else, too, and manages to run the entire universe on the side) then more power to you. You and Jerry can have a grand old time sippin' Margaritas with JC, St. Pete & the Bhoyos when you get to wherever you get to when the rest of us are worm food. If heaven is where fuckers like Falwell wind up, I'm happy to wind up somewhere else. Life is wonderful.
a.d. XVI Kal. Iun.

On round holes and square pegs

This week I get to participate in one of the most enduring public and political myths--the standardized test. Thousands of citizen-voters believe that exams can tell if a student is learning and if a school is "good." "Good schools" are what everyone wants. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, moderates, Greens, Independents, etc., they all want "good schools." Since no one has ever bothered to define exactly what a "good school" is, the convenient political solution of "test scores" fills that need and requires no further study or analysis. I love muddle-headedness! I particularly enjoy poorly thought-out answers and knee-jerk responses! I work in an "alternative" school. A silly name, to be sure. We do indeed provide an alternative to the "traditional" high school--smaller classes, more independence, greater accommodations to different learning styles, multiple ways to demonstrate learning, you get the idea. Are we required to administer the state exams? Of course! Do our students do well on them? Typically not. Does this mean they are stupid and we are a shitty school? Of course not. Granted, many of my charges are woefully under-educated despite our best efforts, and I have no doubt that a commitment to higher "standards" would improve things. But such "standards" are arbitrary. Too often, some bureaucrat makes a copy of the Table of Contents of a textbook and declares "here are our standards!" An army of Ph.D.'s in Sacramento can make a list of stuff that a college freshman needs to know to give him a good shot at success in the university setting, but beyond that I'm unconvinced. When this army of "doctors" can tell me what a good citizen is, and how we nurture that, I'll start listening. In the meantime, the taxpayers need to know that millions of their dollars are being flushed down toilets all over California this week. What do you say to that, Ah-nohld?

A Look at the Loo

I suppose I'll have to label some posts as "rants" about things in general. Fer chrissakes, how does one get through a day without at least one stream of expletives directed at someone or something idiotic? One of my favorite websites, the BBC, has great news and sports, but also celebrity bits of astonishing silliness. The latest Hollywood Hipster to speak out on Important Issues is the lovely and talented Ms. Sheryl Crow, who is concerned about the amount of time the hoi polloi spend wiping their arses. Or, more precisely, the amount of paper we use. Crow has suggested using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required". I can say from this moment forward that I will happily use less TP in the loo, and substitute instead Ms. Crow's CD liners. I'm sure she has a few thousand laying about that can be shipped up my way. At least I can promise Cheryl I'll think of her when I'm wiping the brown gunk off. I know I'm supposed to be glad, grateful even, that a famous wealthy person cares about global warming, especially when El Presidente pretends it isn't real, but gimme a break. Has any one of CC's handlers, minions, toadies, personal assistants, studio reps, lawyers, agents or (gasp) FRIENDS suggested to her that she looks and sounds like an IDIOT when she talks about freaking toilet paper? Look honey, if you want to help, do some real work. Or shut your mouth and open your checkbook and pay people who will.

738 and counting

Unlike the national media, I'm rooting for Barry to go all the way. I know, I know, I said I wouldn't make this into a Giants blog. But after 13 games and 4 homeruns, it looks like Barry is strong and healthy and poised to make history. It will be a Pyrrhic victory. Much of the Baseball Establishment is anti-Bonds and will do everything they can to taint the accomplishment. In fact, they have already. Roger Maris didn't get his due when he broke Ruth's single-season record. When McGwire and Sosa chased history in 1998, Roger got his accolades, finally. Of course he was dead by then. Mark and Sammy have gotten their comeuppance now, and the "sports-writers" and their morally corrupt brethren will make sure that Hank Aaron is properly lionized while Barry Bonds is sledged without mercy. Now, baseball records have a hell of a lot less social significance than loser assholes shooting up college campuses, or the continuing genocide in Darfur (whoops, I mean "ethnic cleansing"). And Mr. Bonds will be adequately compensated for sacrificing his body to sport. But bullshit is bullshit, and "sports-writers" are particularly adept at bullshit. One only has to follow the Jackie Robinson nonsense of the last weekend to get a picture of what "sports-writing" is all about. Now Mr. Robinson accomplished a lot. He deserves recognition. But lets keep it in perspective. Many thousands of African-Americans and victims of race prejudice and discrimination fought terrible battles for their rights, dignity and freedom over the years. A lot of them died hoping their children would have it better than they did. They got no tributes and no hagiographies, and certainly no heroic pictures in childrens' books. I, for one, am sick of heroes, mostly because I'm sick of bullshit. Give me the flawed anti-heroes any day. At least these guys are real, full of the contradictions all of us possess. Barry is no more Satan than Jackie is Saint. Go Barry, Go! Hit a boatload of homers and blow the record away.