Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.
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a middle-aged George Washington
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Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 2h 53m 54s | Global warming residues |
Do you see that rotating cell near Alaska at the top of this wind map of today?
Of course you do. That cell got created due to the effect of colder Northern air mixing with Warmer
Southern air. Right now the Arctic ice is diminishing so fast that the Arctic has less than half the
ice it used to have. Thus the colder air is more Northern than in the past. So that cell you see,
the one that spins the rain onto the west coast of North America, is about 1,000 or so miles more
North than it could be, would the Arctic ice not be less than 50%.
Hence, California now gets beset by the effect of the warm equatorial winds, which strongly blow
East to West and
dominate the Lower Northern Hemisphere wind patterns South and West of Baja California. (Did you
realize how long Baja California is? )
The result is that California gets clockwise wind cells now from January onward. The winds blow down
and force the rain up into Oregon, Washington, and Canada.
If we don't get any more significant rain before May, California is in serious trouble. We are at
16% of the April 1st average right now -- according to the California Department of
Water Resources.
All the life-long Californians that I know (some of whom are older than 60), all of them confess to
this current drought being worse than they have ever seen in their lifetime. Friends of mine coming
back from Tahoe recently, were "shocked" at how little snow there was where there had been plenty --
even as late as last year.
But don't worry, Global Warming is just a myth y'all.
| Monday, 19 January 2015 at 2h 20m 30s | Behold the great mirror of thine self |
I have never had a problem with someone holding my face to a mirror ... because I figured
that this means either one of two things :
- they are correct, and I should be thankful for their willingness to attempt to help me out
with my own personal bullshit; or,
- they are completely off-base and are projecting themselves on me, in which case, they are also doing
me a favor, actually letting me know who they are themselves, in the guise of them saying it's all
about me.
LOL. It's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.
| Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 3h 11m 19s | Poverty is the real issue |
60% of variation on standardized test scores is due to factors outside of the school -- aka poverty.
The realities that teachers face in their never ending effort to teach and elevate kids is beset by
symptoms and effects of children who
- come from broken homes and are moody, not always able on any given day and they get their
motivation by receiving social attention, so their focus isn't on education;
- come from struggling homes, and live in circumstances of stress, so that meals are sparse and
usually not very healthy, or have emotional baggage on a constant basis, creating a subtle lethargy
and grittiness -- because they are hungry and stressed;
- typical teenage or younger students who have minds that are changing so fast they cannot keep
up, and so they misplace the ideas they had the day before, and genuinely cannot remember;
- typical youthful illusions -- didn't study, or waited until the last minute and tried to cram
5 minutes before class.
Teachers are not the problem. There really is no crisis in the school system. This is a created
hysteria. Colleges are being beset with almost twice the number of students because our social
system forces everyone after high school into the college pathway -- whereas Germany has a trades
and professional development pathway and thus 1/2 the number of college-bound students after high
school (by percentage). The notion that our high schools and middle schools are not preparing
students for college is really just a college system that is being thrown too many students who were
never meant to be college bound. The statistic that the "reformers" tout are including subgroups in
the measured population that should not be included.
| Saturday, 17 January 2015 at 19h 18m 54s | Why the San Francisco Newspaper of Record Sucks |
This is how pathetic the San Francisco newspaper called the "chronicle" really is. We call it the
"comical" and this is why.
The corrupt weak mayor "looks" to help "families". Looking at a problem through the minuscule lens
of families says nothing about out of town finance firms buying apartment buildings, kicking all the
tenants out and then reselling the property... Or selling all the apartments as condominiums.
Glad to know the mayor is looking though. Where has his ass been the last 3 years? But oh boy oh boy
the mayor is now looking. It's a good thing that he cares about families.
And look at the smaller headline on the left. "Hurdles are expected" in a race for office in the US
Senate. Well no shit Mr. journalist puppy. Don't you have something more insightful and thought
provoking then the obvious. I suppose this article will be replete with all of the best non-partisan
personalities and choice quotes explaining the headline. There is nothing better than a newspaper
article with 8 quotes from 3 political operatives and rhetorical questions spliced in between.
Yummmmmy. Will Kamila Harris become a closet lunatic and begin babbling communist jargon at the next
public event? Let's get a quote from this lawyer who works for a lobbying group in Sacramento.
Fucking stupid. Such a shame that our world class city has such a pathetic newspaper.
| Saturday, 17 January 2015 at 3h 25m 0s | Let me make this perfectly clear |
I'm quoting myself, but so fucking what :-) :-) This sums up the Bill Gates paradigm versus
education reality in a pith.
The issue is who controls our schools and the curriculum and the teachers who disperse the
curriculum. Do you want over-worked inexperienced teachers using a script and pre-printed materials
who turnover within 5 years? Do you want parent and community involvement or a prinicipal who is
just a manager in a multi-state corporate firm with a CEO who doesn't live in the district? Do you
want a firm
that will cut costs to the bone at the expense of the service called education once they have a
local monopoly? Wake the fuck up.
This is not about creativity or about allowing different ways to solve problems. You are missing the
point.
LET ME STRESS THAT LAST POINT ... just in case you didn't get it.
This is not about creativity or about allowing different ways to solve problems. You are missing the
point.
I know. I know. Please forgive me, but I'm a veteran teacher, and a methodical guitarist. So I
believe in magic of three.
This is not about creativity or about allowing different ways to solve problems. You are missing the
point.
| Thursday, 15 January 2015 at 2h 5m 34s | This is how you handle a devious shwarmy smooth bastard |
bob
so people aren't stupid and try creative ways to work around these problems so we need to dig deeper
than this to validate such claims
ScentOfViolets
You want to know how hard teaching really is, how difficult it is to improve on the basic model?
Thing about the strong AI problem. People will generally agree that we have it when it is able to
sit in a classroom and take instruction the way we expect human students to take instruction.
bob.
sort of a nonsequitor and strong ai thing is less relevant than you think or at least you've not
described a good connection. i'm talking about learning about basic methodological things like
matching pairs. that's not a charter school thing, that's an ed policy thing: see for instance how
similar problems emerge in talking about pre k programs
ginardo napoli
bob, you are speak roving ambiguous parables... matching pairs versus ai thing versus ed policy
thing? Creative ways to work around problems? What problems are you referring to? And what are we
digging into when you say "dig deeper" ? Huhn?
These are amorphous platitudes. It's convoluted man.
What is the point you are trying to make?
bob
i'm not the person who brought in the random strong ai example. matching pairs and stuff like that
are not platitudes, they are social scientific methods to try and reduce conflicting factors and i
was just saying you need to actually look at those methods before saying it's pointless.
ginardo napoli
Whatever bob. You are speaking in symbols. You spoke of digging deeper without actually digging
deeper. Describe. Use specifics. Elaborate. Use details and vivid palpable examples.
You didn't do that.
The issue is not about allowing creativity and using scientific methods to reduce conflicting
factors. And I never said anything about something being "pointless".
The issue is who controls our schools and the curriculum and the teachers who disperse the
curriculum. Do you want over-worked inexperienced teachers using a script and pre-printed materials
who turnover within 5 years? Do you want parent and community involvement or a prinicipal who is
just a manager in multi-state firm with a CEO who doesn't live in the district? Do you want a firm
that will cut costs to the bone at the expense of the service called education once they have a
local monopoly? Wake the fuck up.
This is not about creativity or about allowing different ways to solve problems. You are missing the
point, and yet you are the one talking about "saying it's pointless" ?????
| Wednesday, 14 January 2015 at 2h 44m 42s | Okay I'm finished with being polite |
A recent Forbes article called "The Unappreciated Success of Charter Schools", largely quoted a
study from Mathematica
[SOURCE: Forbes | Adam Ozimek | 11 January 2015]
Blogger Kevin Drum at MotherJones.com blogged about this on Monday, 12 January 2015. Here is the link to the blog post and commentary.
My feelings? Glad you asked. :-) :-)
First of all, that study by Mathematica of 36 Charter schools across 15 States is a very small
sample size, highly subject to bias and extreme events (for example: 34 plumbers + Bill Gates and
Donald Trump). Also: Was it random? Did they stratify the population by characteristics to ensure a
representative sample? I am not sure, but regardless, even still the Forbes article quoted the
following summary from the authors of the Mathematica study:
This paper presents findings from the first national randomized study of
the impacts of charter schools on student achievement, which included
36 charter middle schools across 15 states. The paper compares students
who applied and were admitted to these schools through randomized
admissions lotteries with students who applied and were not admitted. It
finds that, on average, charter middle schools in the study were
neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in
improving student achievement. However, impacts varied significantly
across schools and students, with positive impacts for more disadvantaged schools and students and
negative impacts for the more advantaged.
Notice the bold part. Bingo.
But then notice the italicized extra part that was added to "soften" the reality of the bolded part.
Really? the study says that "impacts varied significantly" across the data from this small sample
size that might not be representative. Go figure? ... but yet there somehow were still "positive"
and "negative" aspects? Huhn?
Positive? Negative? Yea the smart kids get dumbed down, and when you get a school with a few more
high-end kids more than would have been in the public school system, of course it's a benefit. But
is this due to the teaching and curriculum paradigm of the charter's or just by the pure obvious
sociology.
You can't look at this purely by numbers. You have to get to know the day by day, week by week
realities of what these institutions are actually doing to our children.
Furthermore....
The data collected in all of these studies is not based on the same population of kids. You have to
apply to most charter schools, and they get to reject or expel
students. Public schools have to accept every student who registers,
and you can't find reasons to expel students who are not applying
themselves. So Charter schools are serving motivated students who
choose to apply themselves. Even so, they still are not any better
than Public schools, who do rather well despite the horrific realities
of the student population and budget cuts.
But let me quote from some other folks. First, from Chad Brick;
I am not sure if any convincing evidence for or against charter school performance exists - or even
could exist. Even the randomized lottery studies have a fatal flaw:
1: Some students enter the lottery
2: Some of the students win the lottery, some lose
3: Some hyper-motivated parents find a way to get around #2
4: The lottery winners go to school with other lottery winners (and the cheaters), the lottery
losers go to school with those that never entered the lottery and other lottery losers.
Even if you ignore point number three, the fourth point creates a major issue - it is NOT RANDOM.
The children who entered the lottery are not the same as the children who did not. Therefore, any
difference between the charter and the public school might be due to the lottery winners and losers
have a different set of classmates rather than a different set of teachers. The only way around this
would be force all eligible students to enter the lottery, and to my knowledge this has never been
done and is entirely impractical.
Second, from skeptonomist:
When parents put their kids into charters by volunteering or the selection is made otherwise in
non-random ways, and when the charter system is allowed to throw kids (or teachers) back into the
public system if they don't perform, then comparison is invalid. Charter systems may have access to
low-cost teachers that public systems don't. I doubt if all the systems in the metastudy really met
the criteria for a valid test. Those who set up such systems, whether they are private or public,
have motivation and usually some power to impose selectivity. Public systems have little power to
oppose this selectivity.
The truth
is that the vast majority of the charter schools are put into existence and
funded by ideological non-profits so that they can suck up students from
nearby public schools and bring about the demolition of the public
school system. Leave-No-Child-Behind was the first pillar in this long
term plan. It created a plethora of insane ways to label schools as
"failing" or "lacking-improvement" and then kicked in a clause in the
law that enable a charter school to petition in the district. It was
the camel's nose under the tent. Sucking up funds from the local
schools who have extra cost overloads and cannot compete with the cost
structures of the non-profit grant subsidized charters, who often would
operate at a loss otherwise.
Teacher turnover and moral in
charter schools is often terrible. Many teachers are youthful recruits
for Teach for America who are inexperienced and are given a "canned"
curriculum to follow. Need I say that charter schools do not have
unions.
This is the biggest Union-busting scheme in American
History, and it really sucks to read people like Kevin Drum at an outlet like Mother Jones (of all
places) is not even
mentioning it, while at the same time giving lip service to the charter
school movements false achievements of serving the "colored" population
better. (Despite being a completely different population -- readabove.)
If you are clueless or need more info, a good start in your education is Diane Ravitch. Go to her
blog http://dianeravitch.net/ .
Then go read her book "Reign of Error" and begin to become horrified by the truth of the charter
school movement.
| Saturday, 10 January 2015 at 3h 14m 11s | Just a stupid post |
I almost have 1,000 posts (880). So this is a stupid post to get closer to 1,000.
When I was younger (2001 - 2003) I had this goal of reaching 1,000 posts in my mind.
| Saturday, 10 January 2015 at 3h 24m 9s | O ... M ... G |
Thomas Edison somehow can't figure out how to power the light bulb, because he didn't drink ...
"Red Bull" .... OH MY FUCKING GOD.
In twitter speak that is "OMFG" by the way.
This is so ridiculous in numerous ways. First of all, Thomas Edison really was not the FIRST.
Second of all, ALMOST EVERY SINGLE SCIENTIFIC EVENT really is a whole of individual efforts
collectively coinciding at the same time.
Read this : Who invented the Light bulb
Okay. Now how simplistic and stupid is the "Thomas Edison invented the light bulb" story. American
historiography is bullshit, with self-indulgent and bloviating tendencies ... because we are an
insecure culture. We don't have 1,000 years of being in the same place like Europeans, Africans,
and Asians do.
One thousand years ago was 1,014. The battle of Hastings and the Magna Carta had
not yet happened. The Chinese had not yet burned down their huge navy and were sending ships and
commerce between East Africa and Peru. At least this is the current theory: ever notice how
Peruvians look unique in their asian features, and why Peru -- isolated from rest of South America --
is also a unique blend. The carvings in the earth, might well have been Chinese characters for all
we know. The beings with the ships who brought incredible goods and knowledge.
And now there are archaeologists who think (with good evidence) that copper mines in Canada were
responsible for the Bronze Age throughout Eurasia (Western Europe to Russia and South to Northern
Africa and the Mediterranean) -- brought by the Nords and Swedes and Fins and large water carrying
vessels.
Things are more complex and non-individualistic in the macrocosm.
| Thursday, 8 January 2015 at 3h 41m 23s | An Impromptu Poem before I leave My Apartment |
Less is More
Less is more
More or less
They say it's the best
when you detest the more
because it has too much zest
and doth bequest
your attention
all of the time
all of your mind
like a tourniquet or bind
you lose the seeking for the find
and go blind
but life is really about moderation
easing back and doing less
because less is more
just like a dirty whore
or a drug addict
feeling better even though the story never ends
because
the story never really ends
you just use different words to think life has changed
but life never changes
except
that you evolve
or devolve
going up or
going down
slowing down
finding the solution or the satisfaction
wherever happiness resides.
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