Our school district had a district-wide faculty meeting a couple of days ago to discuss the new requirements coming down from the state education department regarding teacher evaluations and the so-called APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) standards. At the moment, teacher evaluation is handled at the local level, and it's seemed to work well enough; all of the principals I've worked with here in New York State have been fair evaluators, and I haven't seen any particular need to alter the system.
But NYSED, which works on the "If It Ain't Broke, Mess Around With It Until It Becomes A Bureaucratic Nightmare" principle, has decreed that teachers are now not only supposed to be evaluated in written form, we're supposed to be given a numerical grade, similar to those we give our students. "Turnabout's fair play," I can hear people saying (many of them will probably be my students); but wait a moment. The grades my students earn are based upon hundreds of smaller assessments, which provide feedback continuously throughout the school year. The grading system proposed by the state generates a single number, at the end, which will be some sort of mysterious composite of "locally-determined assessment rubrics" and such criteria as student achievement and student growth. The details of how this will be done are unclear even to the policymakers in Albany; at the moment, all we have is vague, hand-waving sorts of talk about "metrics for assessing progress," and that local evaluations, of the kind we've always used, can only account for 60% of a teacher's score.
Of course, this opens up a whole host of sticky questions, none of which anyone seems to have answers to. For example, what exactly do we mean by "student growth?" Well, the state has said it has to be some kind of this-June-to-next-June comparison of student achievement. So, if a student in my biology class scores an 85, and goes on to take chemistry and scores a 75, has he regressed? Is his lack of "growth" in the sciences my fault (for not preparing him adequately) or the chemistry teacher's (for not teaching him so that he could keep his scores up to their previous level)?
Okay, what if you looked at composite scores for a particular teacher? It's not any easier. Do you give me good marks (because in my AP Biology class, I have 100% of my students with averages above 80) or bad marks (because in my elective class, currently 1/4 of the students are failing)? How could you compare student scores from a teacher who teaches all AP and honors classes with one who teaches all remedial or special education classes? I hope no one would fall for the ridiculous notion that the former's higher student scores are because (s)he is a better teacher than the latter is.
And in any case, suppose you did figure out a way to collapse a teacher's entire performance during a year into a single number, what would that number actually mean? Suppose I got an 82 one year and a 79 the next. What does that three-point drop signify? Am I 3% worse this year than last year? Suppose I got an 85 and so did a third-grade special education teacher. What would the fact that we got the same score indicate about our teaching ability? How can you use the same set of criteria to generate a score for two people whose jobs require completely different skill sets, and expect that that number has any actual meaning?
Then there's the added twist that schools will be required to make teachers' scores public. That's right -- it will be out there for all to see: GORDON GOT A 68 AS A TEACHER THIS YEAR. We have a host of privacy laws covering students' grades -- I know a teacher who was reprimanded for publicly congratulating a student for getting 100 on an exam, because the kid was "put on the spot" and complained to his parents about it. But our grades will be a matter of public record. That should generate some entertaining lawsuits, don't you think? The lawyers must be rubbing their hands together and cackling with glee over all this.
The most maddening thing about this is that because of President Obama's Race To The Top Initiative, we are being required to rush into this immediately. We applied for RTTT because it promised money -- and New York State won, and our district got... $40,000. A little more than the salary of a single first-year teacher. And now we're being told to revamp our evaluation standards OR ELSE. David Steiner, the Commissioner of Education, has passed along the message to superintendents that he has formed a 63-member study group to come up with a policy, and if they can't make their minds up by July 1, he's going to make up a policy of his own -- because we have to have the new evaluation procedures in place by next September.
So, once again, we are waiting for the micromanaging b-b stackers down in Albany to tell us the latest and greatest. Honestly, I doubt it's going to have much impact on the day-to-day life of teachers; we'll keep doing what we're doing, trying to educate children as well as we can given the constraints of time, money, and energy we continually work under. I do feel for the principals and superintendents, however, who are caught in the middle of this mess, and now have to figure out how to comply with a policy that no one (including the people in charge) seems to have the vaguest idea about.
The whole thing has me torn between laughing and screaming. Part of me is just sitting back, grinning evilly, waiting to see what kind of chaos will occur when they try to make this work. The other half of me, however, mourns for yet another blow to the educational system. With the current troubles -- declining money, union bashing by politicians, teachers being vilified by the press -- it will be a wonder anyone in this generation of college students will choose education as a career.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
ESP (Extra-Sexy Perception)
Daryl Bem, an experimental psychologist of some standing, has an obsession; proving that ESP exists. He's been at this for decades. He was one of the researchers who designed the Ganzfeld Experiment back in the 1980s, in which people were placed in sensory deprivation and allegedly could communicate telepathically. (Other scientists, naturally wishing to see if they could replicate these results, couldn't.)
He's still at it, almost thirty years later, and published a paper last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which he basically says, "Now I've done it! See?"
Unfortunately for Bem, this piece of research is (1) once again generating results that most other scientists don't consider significant, and (2) may be one of the most unintentionally funny experimental designs I've ever heard.
What he did was to take a bunch of college students, and place them in front of two computer screens. The students were equipped with sensors that detected which way their eyes were moving. Then they were shown pairs of photographs on the two screens. The pairs of photographs were made up of (1) an innocent photograph like a landscape or a puppy, and (2) a photograph of people having sex. Bem's claim was that based on the eye movements of the students, they anticipated the screen with the erotic photograph "significantly more than fifty percent of the time."
The experiment was repeated with other types of photographic pairings, and no effect was found.
So, if you accept Bem's results -- ESP works, but only if sex is involved.
Bem writes, with an apparent straight face, "The presentiment studies provide evidence that our physiology can anticipate erotic stimuli before they can occur. Such anticipation would be evolutionarily advantageous for reproduction and survival if the organism could act instrumentally to approach erotic stimuli and avoid negative stimuli."
Sure. That makes total sense. If a guy sees a woman making sexual advances toward him, it's gonna help him out if he's ready to rock and roll 0.1 seconds before she is. Because we all know how slow guys are to get aroused. Excuse me while I take a momentary break to guffaw. All of which tells me that whatever he knows about psychology, the guy (1) doesn't understand evolutionary theory, and (2) apparently has never gotten laid.
Bem's paper also describes a variety of other experiments he conducted. My favorite was one in which he found that studying after a test makes your score better. Yes, you read that right. In Bem's words: "The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words." I hope my students don't find out about this. I have a hard enough time getting them to study as it is.
And of course, no woo-woo article would be complete without a mention of quantum physics. Bem writes, "Those who follow contemporary developments in modern physics, however, will be aware that several features of quantum phenomena are themselves incompatible with our everyday conception of physical reality."
As far as I can tell, this means, "Quantum physics is kinda weird. ESP is also weird. Quantum physics is real. Therefore ESP is real. Q.E.D."
There's also the problem that other psychologists did a statistical analysis of Bem's results, and found that "the evidence for psi is weak to nonexistent." Given that this criticism was published in the same issue of JPSP, you have to wonder how Bem's paper got past the peer review process in the first place.
Anyway, Bem claims that his research shows that if ESP exists, (1) it will help you to locate pornography, and (2) allow you to study after you take tests. All of which explains vividly why his findings would appeal to college students. If he could add another experiment that showed (3) a method for dowsing for beer, I think he'd be the most popular researcher on US college campuses.
He's still at it, almost thirty years later, and published a paper last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which he basically says, "Now I've done it! See?"
Unfortunately for Bem, this piece of research is (1) once again generating results that most other scientists don't consider significant, and (2) may be one of the most unintentionally funny experimental designs I've ever heard.
What he did was to take a bunch of college students, and place them in front of two computer screens. The students were equipped with sensors that detected which way their eyes were moving. Then they were shown pairs of photographs on the two screens. The pairs of photographs were made up of (1) an innocent photograph like a landscape or a puppy, and (2) a photograph of people having sex. Bem's claim was that based on the eye movements of the students, they anticipated the screen with the erotic photograph "significantly more than fifty percent of the time."
The experiment was repeated with other types of photographic pairings, and no effect was found.
So, if you accept Bem's results -- ESP works, but only if sex is involved.
Bem writes, with an apparent straight face, "The presentiment studies provide evidence that our physiology can anticipate erotic stimuli before they can occur. Such anticipation would be evolutionarily advantageous for reproduction and survival if the organism could act instrumentally to approach erotic stimuli and avoid negative stimuli."
Sure. That makes total sense. If a guy sees a woman making sexual advances toward him, it's gonna help him out if he's ready to rock and roll 0.1 seconds before she is. Because we all know how slow guys are to get aroused. Excuse me while I take a momentary break to guffaw. All of which tells me that whatever he knows about psychology, the guy (1) doesn't understand evolutionary theory, and (2) apparently has never gotten laid.
Bem's paper also describes a variety of other experiments he conducted. My favorite was one in which he found that studying after a test makes your score better. Yes, you read that right. In Bem's words: "The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words." I hope my students don't find out about this. I have a hard enough time getting them to study as it is.
And of course, no woo-woo article would be complete without a mention of quantum physics. Bem writes, "Those who follow contemporary developments in modern physics, however, will be aware that several features of quantum phenomena are themselves incompatible with our everyday conception of physical reality."
As far as I can tell, this means, "Quantum physics is kinda weird. ESP is also weird. Quantum physics is real. Therefore ESP is real. Q.E.D."
There's also the problem that other psychologists did a statistical analysis of Bem's results, and found that "the evidence for psi is weak to nonexistent." Given that this criticism was published in the same issue of JPSP, you have to wonder how Bem's paper got past the peer review process in the first place.
Anyway, Bem claims that his research shows that if ESP exists, (1) it will help you to locate pornography, and (2) allow you to study after you take tests. All of which explains vividly why his findings would appeal to college students. If he could add another experiment that showed (3) a method for dowsing for beer, I think he'd be the most popular researcher on US college campuses.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Ear candles and carrot dances
Just when I thought "alternative medicine" couldn't get any weirder, I came across a practice I'd never heard of before: "ear candling."
It's also called "thermo-auricular therapy," which is a little like an elevator operator wanting to be called a "vertical transportation technician." Basically, the concept is that many people suffer from impactions of ear wax, and so what you need to do is to lie on your side and stick a lit candle in your ear. The lit candle will create a suction that will pull the ear wax out.
Practitioners always cut open the candle stubs at the end, showing all the orange goop inside the candle -- but in a controlled experiment performed on himself by skeptic and brave soul Bobby Nelson, it was demonstrated that the orange goop was residue from the candle itself, and was there even if you let the candle burn while sitting on a cereal box. (We are assuming that the cereal box did not have an impaction of ear wax at the time.) You can read the account of his experiment here, and see photos of Nelson lying there with a lit candle in his ear and a very grim expression.
As I was reading about this, I kept thinking this was some kind of prank medical procedure, as April Fools' Day was last week, but tragically, it's not. People really do this, and some people swear by it. Never mind that if the candle actually was capable of creating a powerful enough suction to suck up ear wax, it would rupture your ear drum. Never mind that claims of the practice originating with the Hopi turned out to be lies -- the Hopis, when questioned, responding, "Of course we don't stick lit candles in our ears. Do we look like morons?" Never mind that dozens of people have ended up in the emergency room because hot candle wax ended up dripping down into their ear canals. Never mind that there have been two recorded cases of people performing ear candling on themselves, falling asleep while doing so, and burning down their houses.
I am always amazed at how far the placebo effect and confirmation bias can drive people. Now, don't misunderstand me; there are some types of "alternative medicine" that actually might work, and which are currently being studied by reputable medical researchers. Acupuncture and a few of the herbal medicines come to mind. But to quote Tim Minchin: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works. It's called... medicine." I'm much more willing to believe the dozens of controlled studies that have shown that ginkgo biloba doesn't improve your memory than the anecdotal evidence of people who say "it worked for me." But when not only is there no evidence for something, and controlled studies show that it doesn't work, and there's a good argument that it can't work as advertised, and people still believe in it... that I really don't get.
On the other hand, the obnoxious side of my personality (never very deeply buried) wonders if I might not be able to have a little fun with this. Perhaps I should come up with an alternative medicine therapy of my own, and create a website to promote it, and see how many people I can get to give it a try. How about this one:
Are you tired? Do you sleep poorly? Do you feel like you're not grounded, of late? Invoke the Earth Spirits and realign your Root Chakra by performing the CLEANSING DANCE OF THE SACRED CARROTS. Take two carrots, and bless them, saying, "Oh great Carrot Spirits, bring to me your sacred wisdom." Then stick the carrots up your nose. Then put on some nice New Age music (we suggest Yanni) and dance around in your living room until the carrots are Saturated With The Heaviness Of Your Soul and fall out. Wear gloves to dispose of the carrots so that the Tired Energy doesn't seep back and infect your chakras again. You'll feel better immediately. Trust me.
It's also called "thermo-auricular therapy," which is a little like an elevator operator wanting to be called a "vertical transportation technician." Basically, the concept is that many people suffer from impactions of ear wax, and so what you need to do is to lie on your side and stick a lit candle in your ear. The lit candle will create a suction that will pull the ear wax out.
Practitioners always cut open the candle stubs at the end, showing all the orange goop inside the candle -- but in a controlled experiment performed on himself by skeptic and brave soul Bobby Nelson, it was demonstrated that the orange goop was residue from the candle itself, and was there even if you let the candle burn while sitting on a cereal box. (We are assuming that the cereal box did not have an impaction of ear wax at the time.) You can read the account of his experiment here, and see photos of Nelson lying there with a lit candle in his ear and a very grim expression.
As I was reading about this, I kept thinking this was some kind of prank medical procedure, as April Fools' Day was last week, but tragically, it's not. People really do this, and some people swear by it. Never mind that if the candle actually was capable of creating a powerful enough suction to suck up ear wax, it would rupture your ear drum. Never mind that claims of the practice originating with the Hopi turned out to be lies -- the Hopis, when questioned, responding, "Of course we don't stick lit candles in our ears. Do we look like morons?" Never mind that dozens of people have ended up in the emergency room because hot candle wax ended up dripping down into their ear canals. Never mind that there have been two recorded cases of people performing ear candling on themselves, falling asleep while doing so, and burning down their houses.
I am always amazed at how far the placebo effect and confirmation bias can drive people. Now, don't misunderstand me; there are some types of "alternative medicine" that actually might work, and which are currently being studied by reputable medical researchers. Acupuncture and a few of the herbal medicines come to mind. But to quote Tim Minchin: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works. It's called... medicine." I'm much more willing to believe the dozens of controlled studies that have shown that ginkgo biloba doesn't improve your memory than the anecdotal evidence of people who say "it worked for me." But when not only is there no evidence for something, and controlled studies show that it doesn't work, and there's a good argument that it can't work as advertised, and people still believe in it... that I really don't get.
On the other hand, the obnoxious side of my personality (never very deeply buried) wonders if I might not be able to have a little fun with this. Perhaps I should come up with an alternative medicine therapy of my own, and create a website to promote it, and see how many people I can get to give it a try. How about this one:
Are you tired? Do you sleep poorly? Do you feel like you're not grounded, of late? Invoke the Earth Spirits and realign your Root Chakra by performing the CLEANSING DANCE OF THE SACRED CARROTS. Take two carrots, and bless them, saying, "Oh great Carrot Spirits, bring to me your sacred wisdom." Then stick the carrots up your nose. Then put on some nice New Age music (we suggest Yanni) and dance around in your living room until the carrots are Saturated With The Heaviness Of Your Soul and fall out. Wear gloves to dispose of the carrots so that the Tired Energy doesn't seep back and infect your chakras again. You'll feel better immediately. Trust me.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Cheerleaders for Miskatonic University
New from the "Let's Review The Definition Of Fiction, Shall We?" department, apparently there are people who think that whole pantheon of gods dreamed up by H. P. Lovecraft is real.
Never mind that Lovecraft himself was a staunch materialist. Never mind that he used to respond to nutcases in his own day who'd write to him, claiming to have visited the ruins of Dunwich and Innsmouth, with, "Those places don't exist. I know that for certain. You see, I made them up." Never mind that if you go to your local high school's counseling office, and peruse the bookshelf for a college catalog for Miskatonic University, you will find it goes from "University of Minnesota" directly to "Mississippi State."
You'd think all of that would lead people to the conclusion that Elder Gods were figments of Lovecraft's fevered imagination. You'd think that people would focus on the "myth" part of "Cthulhu mythos."
You'd be wrong.
There are apparently whole cults devoted to the worship of the Elder Gods, amongst whom Cthulhu seems to be the favorite. Yog-Sothoth, who is inevitably described as "congeries of iridescent globes," is also popular, which raises a question: what the hell is a "congery?" I looked it up, and supposedly it means "collection, group, or assemblage." I think you all need to make a point of using this word in a sentence today, such as, "look at that cute congery of puppies," or "that's a mighty nice congery of Star Wars action figures you got there, Bob."
Anyhow, the cultists faced a problem; being that the whole thing was made up, so were all the trappings -- especially the books and so on, such as "the cursed Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred." Undaunted, they simply got into the spirit of things, and made that up, too. A guy who is known only as "Simon" wrote (well, he claims he translated it) the version of the Necronomicon that currently is used by most of your better Cthulhu cults. It's available on Amazon (no, I'm not kidding) and apparently sells quite well.
And, of course, if you're going to have cultists, you'll have people who preach against them. Jack Chick, who is the leader of a nominally Christian fringe group and who seems to be a raving wackmobile, claims that (1) Cthulhu and all the other Elder Gods are real because he's seen them, and (2) they're all minions of Satan so you better be careful. In fact, he published a series of graphic novels about how Satanism is undermining American society, and one of them specifically deals with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and the rest of the gang. It's named, "Who Will Get Eaten First?"
You'd think that anyone who made these kind of claims would be guffawed at. And I live in the hope that 99% of people are rational enough to have exactly that response. But sadly, all you have to do is to Google "Cthulhu cults" and you'll have tens of thousands of hits. So I wondered, what is it about these ideas that people are so attracted to? While I like a lot of Lovecraft's stories, notwithstanding his tendency toward purple prose ("loathsome, amorphous, bubbling slime from the nethermost darkness of the eldritch depths of space and time!") and predictability (why does everyone in his stories live in a house with a "gambrel roof?"), I really would prefer it if his view of the universe was fiction. What with earthquakes, leaking nuclear reactors, rebellions and uprisings, we have enough to worry about these days without there also being evil monsters lurking around trying to eat us for dinner. Of course, the stories are also full of characters who are drawn in by the powers that said monsters allegedly grant their followers, and honestly, I can see how that might be a temptation. If I could chant a magic formula in my classroom and make a misbehaving student or two melt, I think I might be willing to join the Esoteric Order of Dagon, too.
The downside, of course, is that being fiction, it isn't real, which is a distinction these people seem to have trouble with. You'd think the first time they tried to summon up Nyarlathotep, and nothing happened, they'd basically sit back and say, "Well, I guess it's all fake. What a bunch of goobers we are," and go back to their jobs and houses and so on. But that never seems to happen with Believers, does it? All you need is conviction, and a grim determination to hold on to your ideas in the face of contrary evidence, and you're set for life.
Never mind that Lovecraft himself was a staunch materialist. Never mind that he used to respond to nutcases in his own day who'd write to him, claiming to have visited the ruins of Dunwich and Innsmouth, with, "Those places don't exist. I know that for certain. You see, I made them up." Never mind that if you go to your local high school's counseling office, and peruse the bookshelf for a college catalog for Miskatonic University, you will find it goes from "University of Minnesota" directly to "Mississippi State."
You'd think all of that would lead people to the conclusion that Elder Gods were figments of Lovecraft's fevered imagination. You'd think that people would focus on the "myth" part of "Cthulhu mythos."
You'd be wrong.
There are apparently whole cults devoted to the worship of the Elder Gods, amongst whom Cthulhu seems to be the favorite. Yog-Sothoth, who is inevitably described as "congeries of iridescent globes," is also popular, which raises a question: what the hell is a "congery?" I looked it up, and supposedly it means "collection, group, or assemblage." I think you all need to make a point of using this word in a sentence today, such as, "look at that cute congery of puppies," or "that's a mighty nice congery of Star Wars action figures you got there, Bob."
Anyhow, the cultists faced a problem; being that the whole thing was made up, so were all the trappings -- especially the books and so on, such as "the cursed Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred." Undaunted, they simply got into the spirit of things, and made that up, too. A guy who is known only as "Simon" wrote (well, he claims he translated it) the version of the Necronomicon that currently is used by most of your better Cthulhu cults. It's available on Amazon (no, I'm not kidding) and apparently sells quite well.
And, of course, if you're going to have cultists, you'll have people who preach against them. Jack Chick, who is the leader of a nominally Christian fringe group and who seems to be a raving wackmobile, claims that (1) Cthulhu and all the other Elder Gods are real because he's seen them, and (2) they're all minions of Satan so you better be careful. In fact, he published a series of graphic novels about how Satanism is undermining American society, and one of them specifically deals with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and the rest of the gang. It's named, "Who Will Get Eaten First?"
You'd think that anyone who made these kind of claims would be guffawed at. And I live in the hope that 99% of people are rational enough to have exactly that response. But sadly, all you have to do is to Google "Cthulhu cults" and you'll have tens of thousands of hits. So I wondered, what is it about these ideas that people are so attracted to? While I like a lot of Lovecraft's stories, notwithstanding his tendency toward purple prose ("loathsome, amorphous, bubbling slime from the nethermost darkness of the eldritch depths of space and time!") and predictability (why does everyone in his stories live in a house with a "gambrel roof?"), I really would prefer it if his view of the universe was fiction. What with earthquakes, leaking nuclear reactors, rebellions and uprisings, we have enough to worry about these days without there also being evil monsters lurking around trying to eat us for dinner. Of course, the stories are also full of characters who are drawn in by the powers that said monsters allegedly grant their followers, and honestly, I can see how that might be a temptation. If I could chant a magic formula in my classroom and make a misbehaving student or two melt, I think I might be willing to join the Esoteric Order of Dagon, too.
The downside, of course, is that being fiction, it isn't real, which is a distinction these people seem to have trouble with. You'd think the first time they tried to summon up Nyarlathotep, and nothing happened, they'd basically sit back and say, "Well, I guess it's all fake. What a bunch of goobers we are," and go back to their jobs and houses and so on. But that never seems to happen with Believers, does it? All you need is conviction, and a grim determination to hold on to your ideas in the face of contrary evidence, and you're set for life.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Responsible parties
So now Reverend Terry Jones of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, in his desire to prove himself as an exemplar of Christ's love, has burned a copy of the Quran. Muslim mobs are, as I am writing this, rioting in Afghanistan and probably elsewhere. A UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif has been stormed, and rioters killed several UN workers from Sweden and Nepal.
Jones states that he is "devastated" by this, but "is not responsible for what happened."
Responsibility is an interesting subject, isn't it? Jones' claim reminds me of the day a fight broke out in class during my first year as a teacher. It turned out that a young man who was a known bully (well, known to the students -- I didn't realize it until that day) had been surreptitiously poking a classmate. The classmate was a disturbed young man with issues known to everyone (students and staff alike) regarding self-control, anger, and volatility. Without warning, the bully found himself tackled, pinned to the floor, and nearly had his eyes clawed out before I could pull the two apart.
The bully's defense? "All I did was poke him."
Please note that I am not defending the Muslim rioters; I have, on several occasions, taken serious issue with Muslim apologists calling Islam "a religion of peace," given that any time anything bad happens, Muslim mobs seem to go on the rampage and blow things up. So, let's take it as a given that the Muslim rioters bear a great deal of the responsibility.
To what extent should Reverend Jones share in the blame for what happened?
Well, let's see. "Blame" usually is doled out when you knew something bad was going to happen, and went ahead and did it anyway. Did he know that the Muslims consider burning the Quran a vile act? Yup. Did he know that if he burned the Quran, riots were likely, and people were probably going to be hurt or killed? Yup. Had he been warned not to do it? Yup. Did he go ahead and do it anyway? Yup.
Yet he still says he is "not responsible."
Interestingly, the only person in the church who has come out with an uneasy defense is Jones' son, Luke Jones. "We've not studied the Quran, but we still have an opinion," the younger Jones stated to reporters. "We're actually not educated. We're common people."
So, let me get this straight: "We're a bunch of nitwits" is an excuse? And if you don't know what you're talking about, what the hell makes you think you're entitled to have an opinion?
Okay, that looks clear enough. Jones' claim not to bear any responsibility is unadulterated horse waste, and it'd be nice if someone with some clout would make that clear to him. Not that it would be likely to make any difference; zealots never change their minds about anything. That's what being a zealot means. And, apparently, being a zealot also means never having to say you're sorry.
That's the easy one. How about some blame for President Hamid Karzai, who publicly announced what Jones had done, in order to express his "outrage" at the desecration? Without that statement, 99% of Afghans would never have known what had happened, and the Nepalis and Swedes would likely still be alive today. By the same litmus test as Reverend Jones, Karzai is also guilty.
How about the American press, who reported on what Jones had done? Same thing. It's all well and good to say "I'm just reporting on what happened." How about some consideration of the results? It would have been a fitting response to Jones and his congregation of mindless ideologues if the response from the press had been total silence. I'm all for freedom of information, but there are times when the person in question doesn't deserve one more word of coverage. (Charlie Sheen come to mind? Yeah, for me, too.) We have created a press that looks for sensationalism by our very appetite for it.
But second to the rioters, Jones himself deserves the most blame, not to mention a nice, solid kick in the ass, not that anyone's likely to give it to him. He can claim all he wants that his little publicity stunt of burning a Quran was a blow against Satan, and that he bears no responsibility for what followed. But in reality, his claim is no more reasonable than that of a man who gets mauled after poking a bear with a sharp stick, and says, "Wow. I had no idea that was going to happen."
Jones states that he is "devastated" by this, but "is not responsible for what happened."
Responsibility is an interesting subject, isn't it? Jones' claim reminds me of the day a fight broke out in class during my first year as a teacher. It turned out that a young man who was a known bully (well, known to the students -- I didn't realize it until that day) had been surreptitiously poking a classmate. The classmate was a disturbed young man with issues known to everyone (students and staff alike) regarding self-control, anger, and volatility. Without warning, the bully found himself tackled, pinned to the floor, and nearly had his eyes clawed out before I could pull the two apart.
The bully's defense? "All I did was poke him."
Please note that I am not defending the Muslim rioters; I have, on several occasions, taken serious issue with Muslim apologists calling Islam "a religion of peace," given that any time anything bad happens, Muslim mobs seem to go on the rampage and blow things up. So, let's take it as a given that the Muslim rioters bear a great deal of the responsibility.
To what extent should Reverend Jones share in the blame for what happened?
Well, let's see. "Blame" usually is doled out when you knew something bad was going to happen, and went ahead and did it anyway. Did he know that the Muslims consider burning the Quran a vile act? Yup. Did he know that if he burned the Quran, riots were likely, and people were probably going to be hurt or killed? Yup. Had he been warned not to do it? Yup. Did he go ahead and do it anyway? Yup.
Yet he still says he is "not responsible."
Interestingly, the only person in the church who has come out with an uneasy defense is Jones' son, Luke Jones. "We've not studied the Quran, but we still have an opinion," the younger Jones stated to reporters. "We're actually not educated. We're common people."
So, let me get this straight: "We're a bunch of nitwits" is an excuse? And if you don't know what you're talking about, what the hell makes you think you're entitled to have an opinion?
Okay, that looks clear enough. Jones' claim not to bear any responsibility is unadulterated horse waste, and it'd be nice if someone with some clout would make that clear to him. Not that it would be likely to make any difference; zealots never change their minds about anything. That's what being a zealot means. And, apparently, being a zealot also means never having to say you're sorry.
That's the easy one. How about some blame for President Hamid Karzai, who publicly announced what Jones had done, in order to express his "outrage" at the desecration? Without that statement, 99% of Afghans would never have known what had happened, and the Nepalis and Swedes would likely still be alive today. By the same litmus test as Reverend Jones, Karzai is also guilty.
How about the American press, who reported on what Jones had done? Same thing. It's all well and good to say "I'm just reporting on what happened." How about some consideration of the results? It would have been a fitting response to Jones and his congregation of mindless ideologues if the response from the press had been total silence. I'm all for freedom of information, but there are times when the person in question doesn't deserve one more word of coverage. (Charlie Sheen come to mind? Yeah, for me, too.) We have created a press that looks for sensationalism by our very appetite for it.
But second to the rioters, Jones himself deserves the most blame, not to mention a nice, solid kick in the ass, not that anyone's likely to give it to him. He can claim all he wants that his little publicity stunt of burning a Quran was a blow against Satan, and that he bears no responsibility for what followed. But in reality, his claim is no more reasonable than that of a man who gets mauled after poking a bear with a sharp stick, and says, "Wow. I had no idea that was going to happen."
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Steve, Steve, Jennifer, and Onesimus
A recent study of 3000 parents in Britain revealed the startling finding that twenty percent of parents regret the name they chose for their children.
It's hard to decide on a name, which probably explains the plethora of baby name books out there on the market. Parents want something that will be a source of pride for the child, and will give the child a sense of identity. (Except, apparently, in my own parents' case, as I was named after my dad, something for which I still haven't forgiven them.) But sometimes, in that search for uniqueness, parents land on a name that falls into the "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" department.
Even more common names sometimes have their downsides, suggests another study, by David Figlio of Northwestern University. Figlio and his team first did phonemic studies of thousands of names, to sort them into "masculine sounding" and "feminine sounding" names. They then looked at data from schools, and came up with the amazing trend that boys given feminine-sounding names (e.g. Ashley, Shannon) were significantly more likely to cause discipline problems, and girls given masculine-sounding names (e.g. Madison, Morgan) were far less likely to choose academically rigorous courses of study.
Are names destiny? There certainly have been general shifts in naming patterns; what is popular with one generation is out in the next, which is why some names end up sounding "old fashioned." I recall a comic strip from the 1970s, depicting the typical group photo shot of a first grade class, the teacher sitting primly at the end of the first row. The caption read: "Top Row: Steve, Steve, Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Jennifer, Steve. Middle Row: Jennifer, Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Steve, Steve, Steve. Bottom Row: Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Steve, and Mrs. Bertha Q. Wackenhorst."
This one struck a special note for me. My grandmother's given name was Bertha Viola, and amongst her siblings were Roxzella Vandell, Orsa Osburne, Flossie Doris, Fanny Elinore, and Clarence Arnold. Thank heaven their last name was Scott; with an odd-sounding last name, any of those combinations would have been unfortunate indeed.
I find it interesting to consider why the rather harsh-sounding, mostly Germanic names that were in vogue in the late 19th century are mostly gone. These days you see few, if any, children named Hilda, Ethel, Edgar, Harold, Arthur, Gertrude, Archibald, and so on. These were amongst the most popular names during the last decades of the 1800s and the first of the 1900s, and yet by the 1950s all of them were virtually gone from the baby name books. Did parents of that era think that giving a child a strong-sounding name would be an asset in their making their way in the world? If so, that gives us an interesting insight into the worldview of turn-of-the-century America.
Some names make you wonder what the parents were thinking at the time. The parents of Chanda Lear, should, in my opinion, be kicked. I also find myself wondering why parents would choose a relatively common name and then spell it strangely. I suppose the desire is to impart a sense of uniqueness and individuality to the name, but the sheer inconvenience of it would (for me, at least) outweigh any sense of pride in having a name that has a twist in the way it's spelled. This seems to be more common with girls' names, for some reason. Naming a child Krystee, Liane (pronounced like Leanne), or Erykah -- all monikers borne by former students of mine -- just seems to be asking for a lifetime of having your name misspelled.
However, it's not always the given name that results in a cross to bear for the individual, and a humorous effect for the rest of us. Working for a registrar's office, one of my first jobs after graduating from college, I ran into transcripts for Turki Hasher, Celestina Crapp, Timothy Turnipseed, Carl Tolfree, and James Hollopeter. Family allegiance notwithstanding, I can't imagine why Cloyd Dick IV wouldn't change his name.
As I mentioned earlier, I rather dislike my own first name, but not enough to go through the hassle of changing it. But just considering what it would be like to go through life as Basile Bastard or Earless Romero (both real names, I swear) makes me unlikely to complain. And if you think things are bad now, go back in history, and you run into some truly wacky ones. My wife's ancestry boasts a woman named Albreda de Brumpton. My own includes a German dude named Poppo von Rot. A dear friend of mine descends from a Georgia plantation owner named Onesimus Futch. My son thinks this sounds like an insult. ("You... you... onesimus futch, you!!!") So, it could be worse.
A great deal worse.
It's hard to decide on a name, which probably explains the plethora of baby name books out there on the market. Parents want something that will be a source of pride for the child, and will give the child a sense of identity. (Except, apparently, in my own parents' case, as I was named after my dad, something for which I still haven't forgiven them.) But sometimes, in that search for uniqueness, parents land on a name that falls into the "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" department.
Even more common names sometimes have their downsides, suggests another study, by David Figlio of Northwestern University. Figlio and his team first did phonemic studies of thousands of names, to sort them into "masculine sounding" and "feminine sounding" names. They then looked at data from schools, and came up with the amazing trend that boys given feminine-sounding names (e.g. Ashley, Shannon) were significantly more likely to cause discipline problems, and girls given masculine-sounding names (e.g. Madison, Morgan) were far less likely to choose academically rigorous courses of study.
Are names destiny? There certainly have been general shifts in naming patterns; what is popular with one generation is out in the next, which is why some names end up sounding "old fashioned." I recall a comic strip from the 1970s, depicting the typical group photo shot of a first grade class, the teacher sitting primly at the end of the first row. The caption read: "Top Row: Steve, Steve, Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Jennifer, Steve. Middle Row: Jennifer, Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Steve, Steve, Steve. Bottom Row: Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Jennifer, Steve, Jennifer, Steve, and Mrs. Bertha Q. Wackenhorst."
This one struck a special note for me. My grandmother's given name was Bertha Viola, and amongst her siblings were Roxzella Vandell, Orsa Osburne, Flossie Doris, Fanny Elinore, and Clarence Arnold. Thank heaven their last name was Scott; with an odd-sounding last name, any of those combinations would have been unfortunate indeed.
I find it interesting to consider why the rather harsh-sounding, mostly Germanic names that were in vogue in the late 19th century are mostly gone. These days you see few, if any, children named Hilda, Ethel, Edgar, Harold, Arthur, Gertrude, Archibald, and so on. These were amongst the most popular names during the last decades of the 1800s and the first of the 1900s, and yet by the 1950s all of them were virtually gone from the baby name books. Did parents of that era think that giving a child a strong-sounding name would be an asset in their making their way in the world? If so, that gives us an interesting insight into the worldview of turn-of-the-century America.
Some names make you wonder what the parents were thinking at the time. The parents of Chanda Lear, should, in my opinion, be kicked. I also find myself wondering why parents would choose a relatively common name and then spell it strangely. I suppose the desire is to impart a sense of uniqueness and individuality to the name, but the sheer inconvenience of it would (for me, at least) outweigh any sense of pride in having a name that has a twist in the way it's spelled. This seems to be more common with girls' names, for some reason. Naming a child Krystee, Liane (pronounced like Leanne), or Erykah -- all monikers borne by former students of mine -- just seems to be asking for a lifetime of having your name misspelled.
However, it's not always the given name that results in a cross to bear for the individual, and a humorous effect for the rest of us. Working for a registrar's office, one of my first jobs after graduating from college, I ran into transcripts for Turki Hasher, Celestina Crapp, Timothy Turnipseed, Carl Tolfree, and James Hollopeter. Family allegiance notwithstanding, I can't imagine why Cloyd Dick IV wouldn't change his name.
As I mentioned earlier, I rather dislike my own first name, but not enough to go through the hassle of changing it. But just considering what it would be like to go through life as Basile Bastard or Earless Romero (both real names, I swear) makes me unlikely to complain. And if you think things are bad now, go back in history, and you run into some truly wacky ones. My wife's ancestry boasts a woman named Albreda de Brumpton. My own includes a German dude named Poppo von Rot. A dear friend of mine descends from a Georgia plantation owner named Onesimus Futch. My son thinks this sounds like an insult. ("You... you... onesimus futch, you!!!") So, it could be worse.
A great deal worse.
Friday, April 1, 2011
The April fools
Happy April Fools' Day! In celebration of this day, famous for its silly pranks, we're gonna play a game. Below are some "news stories." Your task is to determine which one (or ones) are true, and which are inventions of my overactive imagination and mischievous sense of humor. Have fun!
1) The Doody Duty: Faced with shrinking revenues and rising costs of maintenance for sewer lines and sewage treatment plants, Mayor John Suttle of Omaha came up with a novel idea; a ten-cents-per-roll federal tax on toilet paper.
Sewer project upgrades, such as the one that Omaha is currently planning, are federal unfunded mandates, and as such, they can really harm budgeting on the city level, Suttle explained. "Cities across the country are going to be saddled with this horrific debt. I'm ready to go to battle for this."
That's one way to wipe out debt, I suppose.
2) Mars, Better Dead and Red: President of Venezuela and noted astrophysicist Hugo Chavez weighed in on the lifelessness of the Red Planet last week, speculating that life may have once existed on Mars.
Perhaps there were once great civilizations on Mars, he suggested, until "capitalism and imperialism came in and finished them off." When his comments were greeted with thunderous silence, Chavez, as always undaunted by the odd looks people give him, went on to say, "I have always said and heard that it would not be strange if this were so."
3) The Trump Card: Billionaire and GOP hopeful Donald Trump has recently joined the "birthers," a group of mostly Republican malcontents who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore should have been ineligible to run for the office of president.
Trump, and many birthers, have wondered why Obama doesn't just put an end to the debate by producing his birth certificate. "If somebody asked me to see my birth certificate," he boasted to Greta van Susteren of Fox News, "I could have it in their hands in an hour." The implication, of course, is that Obama doesn't have an actual US birth certificate, and therefore sidles away from the issue because he can't produce such a document.
To show how easy it is, Trump released his own birth certificate, duly issued by the Jamaica-Queens hospital where he was born. The problem is... birth certificates are only issued by the New York City Department of Health, so what he released wasn't his actual birth certificate.
"Oops," spokesmen for the Trump campaign said, when the mistake was made public, or words to that effect. "He'll release the actual one... um... just as soon as possible." After that, I'm hoping that he'll release documents that explain why his hair looks like a possum crawled onto his scalp and died.
4) Best of Both Worlds: Rock singer and noted astrophysicist Sammy Hagar reported last week that his interest in UFOs has a personal side; he is an abductee.
Twenty years ago, Hagar said, he was in California, and some aliens from another planet whisked him away.
"It was real," Hagar said, in an interview. "They were plugged into me. It was a download situation... Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment."
The former lead singer of Van Halen was unclear as to why the aliens picked him, but suggested such experiences were actually quite common. He also claimed that the release of his story was in no way a publicity stunt connected with the upcoming release of his biography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock.
5) A Glowing Report: Right-wing columnist, shrieking harpy, and noted nuclear physicist Ann Coulter claims that the Japanese should look at the bright side; the people who have been exposed to radiation from the leakage of contaminated water at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant are now much less likely to get cancer.
Citing studies sponsored by the Department of Energy, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, and scientists from an unspecified research group in Taiwan, Coulter describes the phenomenon of hormesis, in which people exposed to low levels of a toxin develop a resistance to its effects. Because of this, we shouldn't worry about the nuclear leaks in Japan.
"Every day," Coulter writes, "Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron -- all poisons." She also states that being that caffeine is also a poison, America drinks copious amounts of poison every day, to no apparent ill effects.
Hormesis, Coulter admits, is "hardly a settled scientific fact," but nevertheless concluded her op-ed piece by speculating that Japanese citizens near Fukushima will probably outlive us all, here in "hermetically-sealed, radiation-free America." Donations to a fund to send Coulter to Fukushima so that she can absorb some of its life-giving rays will be gratefully accepted.
Okay, ready for the answers?
They're all true! Ha! April Fools! No way am I creative enough to make all of this stuff up.
1) The Doody Duty: Faced with shrinking revenues and rising costs of maintenance for sewer lines and sewage treatment plants, Mayor John Suttle of Omaha came up with a novel idea; a ten-cents-per-roll federal tax on toilet paper.
Sewer project upgrades, such as the one that Omaha is currently planning, are federal unfunded mandates, and as such, they can really harm budgeting on the city level, Suttle explained. "Cities across the country are going to be saddled with this horrific debt. I'm ready to go to battle for this."
That's one way to wipe out debt, I suppose.
2) Mars, Better Dead and Red: President of Venezuela and noted astrophysicist Hugo Chavez weighed in on the lifelessness of the Red Planet last week, speculating that life may have once existed on Mars.
Perhaps there were once great civilizations on Mars, he suggested, until "capitalism and imperialism came in and finished them off." When his comments were greeted with thunderous silence, Chavez, as always undaunted by the odd looks people give him, went on to say, "I have always said and heard that it would not be strange if this were so."
3) The Trump Card: Billionaire and GOP hopeful Donald Trump has recently joined the "birthers," a group of mostly Republican malcontents who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore should have been ineligible to run for the office of president.
Trump, and many birthers, have wondered why Obama doesn't just put an end to the debate by producing his birth certificate. "If somebody asked me to see my birth certificate," he boasted to Greta van Susteren of Fox News, "I could have it in their hands in an hour." The implication, of course, is that Obama doesn't have an actual US birth certificate, and therefore sidles away from the issue because he can't produce such a document.
To show how easy it is, Trump released his own birth certificate, duly issued by the Jamaica-Queens hospital where he was born. The problem is... birth certificates are only issued by the New York City Department of Health, so what he released wasn't his actual birth certificate.
"Oops," spokesmen for the Trump campaign said, when the mistake was made public, or words to that effect. "He'll release the actual one... um... just as soon as possible." After that, I'm hoping that he'll release documents that explain why his hair looks like a possum crawled onto his scalp and died.
4) Best of Both Worlds: Rock singer and noted astrophysicist Sammy Hagar reported last week that his interest in UFOs has a personal side; he is an abductee.
Twenty years ago, Hagar said, he was in California, and some aliens from another planet whisked him away.
"It was real," Hagar said, in an interview. "They were plugged into me. It was a download situation... Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment."
The former lead singer of Van Halen was unclear as to why the aliens picked him, but suggested such experiences were actually quite common. He also claimed that the release of his story was in no way a publicity stunt connected with the upcoming release of his biography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock.
5) A Glowing Report: Right-wing columnist, shrieking harpy, and noted nuclear physicist Ann Coulter claims that the Japanese should look at the bright side; the people who have been exposed to radiation from the leakage of contaminated water at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant are now much less likely to get cancer.
Citing studies sponsored by the Department of Energy, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, and scientists from an unspecified research group in Taiwan, Coulter describes the phenomenon of hormesis, in which people exposed to low levels of a toxin develop a resistance to its effects. Because of this, we shouldn't worry about the nuclear leaks in Japan.
"Every day," Coulter writes, "Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron -- all poisons." She also states that being that caffeine is also a poison, America drinks copious amounts of poison every day, to no apparent ill effects.
Hormesis, Coulter admits, is "hardly a settled scientific fact," but nevertheless concluded her op-ed piece by speculating that Japanese citizens near Fukushima will probably outlive us all, here in "hermetically-sealed, radiation-free America." Donations to a fund to send Coulter to Fukushima so that she can absorb some of its life-giving rays will be gratefully accepted.
Okay, ready for the answers?
They're all true! Ha! April Fools! No way am I creative enough to make all of this stuff up.
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