A Simple Desultory Dangling Conversation

Root and Fruit

2010-12-02T10:04:00.000-05:00

I love it when ideas take root and bear fruit.

A history teacher I work with ran with my suggestion to, "have students experience history, not just read about it." In his WWI-on-the-home-front unit, he had his students create a weekly menu, and list out the ingredients.

Then he posted the ration points available, based on a wartime document from a typical midwestern town one week in March, 1943. Flying eyebrows and colorful language ensued. One group had decided to keep chickens in the yard; no points spent on eggs or chicken. That prompted a family-lore recollection: During the war, the family kept chickens on the vacant lot next door. Each day, the hens were lifted. If there was an egg, it went into a pocket. If there wasn't an egg, the bird got its neck wrung and went into a basket. Produce, or else - there's a war on, buddy!

Another group blew two months' worth of points for a single week's menu. "Enjoy the feast, because you're going to be mighty hungry in a couple of weeks."

Student: "How come there are no points for bread?" Instructor: "There are points for flour. You can bake bread."

Bottom line: They "got it."

Mbele Tse’ Tse’aar - The African Wise Man

2010-11-11T22:08:00.006-05:00

Background: This Christmas, my church will donate mosquito netting to a village in Africa to help prevent malaria. The worship coordinator decided that an African theme to the service would be nice. She wanted to have the children come up and be told an African Christmas story. The problem is, of course, that the Christmas story isn't African. But there is a lgendary tie-in to Africa....

Mbele Tse’ Tse’aar - The African Wise Man

Many, many years ago, in the east of the vast land that is now called Africa, there was a great kingdom called Ethiopia. Their rulers were noble and wise, and they built great cities. The stories were told of how Tse’ba, an ancient Queen of Ethiopia, had won the heart of the great King Sh’lomo of Yi’isra’al, far to the north. Egypt, the glory of her Pharaohs and pyramids long past, bowed to the East African Kings. The Romans, who had conquered so much of the Known World, left Ethiopia alone. The people of Ethiopia lived in plenty and peace.

It was into this world that Mbele Tse’ Tse’aar was born. From an early age, Mbele was taught how the heavens direct the hands of men, telling them when to plant, when to expect the rains, when to harvest. He learned how the stars and moon wheel in the great dome of the sky, how the Wandering Stars (the ones the Greeks called "planets") move among the constellations, and how to use their motions to predict the change of seasons. He also learned to watch for signs and portents, unusual happenings in the sky, portents of change.

Mbele grew wise in the ways of his people, earning great honor for his ability to read the stars. A learned man, he knew of the prophecies recorded by the people of Yi’isra’al, whom Queen Tse’ba had adopted as her own. These prophecies foretold the birth of a great King, a King of Kings, who would rule the whole earth. Mbele hoped that he might one day see the heavenly sign of this King’s birth, but he did not really expect to live so long.

One night Mbele was holding his hands up to heavens to measure the distance between the White Wandering Star (the one the Romans called Venus) and the Red Wandering Star (the one the Romans called Mars), when he saw something new!

A faint, fuzzy spot of light had appeared where nothing had been before. Mbele took careful note of its position.

The next night, he looked for the fuzzy light. It had moved! The Wandering Stars were where he expected them to be, but this new, fuzzy star... was not.

The next night the fuzzy star had moved yet again. When day came, Mbele spoke with the elder sky-watchers. Together they consulted the records of their people. Fuzzy stars were rare indeed, sometimes taking on terrifying appearances. And more, they always seemed to appear at times of great change.

Mbele did not sleep well that night, nor for many nights thereafter. The new star continued to move across the heavens in a steady northward path. By the time of the new moon, Mbele had decided that this new star heralded the birth of the Great King predicted by the ancient prophets of Yi’isra’al. He resolved to travel to meet the new king.

At that time, the greatest and most knowledgeable of the sky-watchers lived in the ancient land of Ur, between the two great rivers Tigris and Euphrates, the land where civilization itself began. Mbele arranged a to join a caravan of traders to that distant land, where he hoped to consult with sages even more wise than he. After many weeks’ journey he came to the sun-baked city, built around a tall, stepped tower. At nightfall he climbed the steps and greeted the sky-watchers there, who were taking their measurements of the heavenly bodies, including the new star. They listened with interest as Mbele told of his observations and his travels.

Mbele was chosen to be part of a delegation to travel to Yi’isra’al to greet the new King. The journey by caravan was long. They traveled by night, following the star as it grew into a flaming arrow pointing to the west. They came into the land of Yi’isra’al and sought the King, Chah’rod. Chah’rod was a jealous king. He was alarmed that a new king had been born, and especially that the birth had been announced in the heavens. He inquired of his own wise men where the King was to be born. Consulting the ancient writings, they told Chah’rod that the King was to be born in Beit Le’chem. King Chah’rod asked Mbele and his companions to find the newborn King, and then return and tell him where the child might be found.

Of course you know the rest of the story: The Wise Men found and worshipped the baby Y’Shua, the new-born King, giving him princely gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned by a dream that Chah’rod meant harm to the Child, they returned to Ur by another path.

You might think the story ends there. But decades later, Mbele traveled even farther east, to the land called India - as ancient as Ur, and as learned in the ways of the stars. There he met a man from Yi’isra’al, called To’mas, who told him an amazing tale: How the child Y’shua born in Beit Le’chem many years ago had grown into a great teacher and healer. How he had angered the religious rulers and had been put to death, and how he rose again after three days. To’mas had doubted the story until Y’Shua appeared to him in the flesh.

To’mas carefully explained to Mbele how Y’Shua had fulfilled all the prophecies of the ancient prophets about the King of Kings. He explained to Mbele that if he trusted in Y’Shua, that all his sins would be forgiven and that he would spend eternity in the presence of the Creator of the Heavens. Mbele received this Good News with great joy.

The tales record that Mbele T’se T’aar, later called Balthazar, was baptised by Thomas the Doubter, who brought the Gospel to India.

Where the heck have I been?

2010-10-27T21:24:00.003-05:00

On Twitter, mostly (just passed 21,000 posts).

There, I'm talking to nearly 1700 folks. (Not necessarily talking WITH them, mind you...)

Here, I'm mostly talking to myself.

Not that that's a bad thing.

And in my defense, August and September were VERY busy. Still, six posts since the beginning of the year is pretty pathetic. Am I unable to think more than 140 characters at a time?

Refudiation

2010-07-20T09:16:00.003-05:00

Some folks want to build a mosque on the 9/11 Ground Zero site. While we're at it, why don't we also:

Give the Alamo to La Raza to use as a training center
Erect a Shinto shrine to Emperor Hirohito over the U.S.S. Arizona
Put up a statue of General Sherman in Atlanta
Build a Biergarten at Auschwitz
Use the Kabba as the cornerstone for a new Temple on Temple Mount
Turn the Dublin General Post Office into a vacation home for the British Crown
Build a US Army base at Wounded Knee

What part of insult don't these people understand?

My most popular post, by far

2010-06-25T09:33:00.002-05:00

I'm pleased that I keep getting comments on my February 2009 post, "The Upside-Down Pop Quiz". I am curious, though, what route people take to it. Is it turning up in search engines? Under what keywords? Did some influential edublogger link to it? I wonder as I wander...

Here's wishing you a happy voyage home, Dad.

2010-05-03T07:27:00.002-05:00

Dad passed away Saturday morning.

Considerate of others to the end, he hung on until I arrived Friday night, (weather delays be damned), and then kindly gave me and my sister all day Saturday and Sunday morning to "do stuff."

Through the wee hours I sat as his bedside reminding him of the good times we had fishing, cooking, camping, Scouting. I chuckled that not a day passed that his voice didn't come out of my mouth. I reassured him that "the kids were alright" and that all would be well. He'd done his job. Several times I looked into his eyes and I know that he saw and heard me. On a couple of occasions as I just sat next to him I looked up and saw him looking at me. I met his gaze and he gave me a slow blink, as if to say, "Ya done good, Aggie."

Around 6:30, his breathing pattern changed. At the suggestion of the nurse I called my sister and held the phone up to his ear. He took a sharp deep breath and closed his eyes. I sang "Anchors Aweigh" to him as he sailed, just as he used to sing me to sleep.

Later, dozing at the hotel, I had a flash of an image: Dad dancing with his beloved Kathleen, his wife late in life, and then with my mother, who passed away decades ago. He was in the prime of life and had that mischievous look in his eyes. Mais oui, he was surrounded by family and friends at the biggest fais do do you ever did see, cher.

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

Lost Nation Airport

2010-02-22T23:14:00.002-05:00

Remarks delivered at a public hearing before the Lake County Port Authority and the Commissioners of Lake County, regarding this report.

Lost Nation Airport is an irreplaceable part of the business transportation infrastructure of this area. While the study looks at the profit & loss and payroll of the airport itself, it's not clear whether it examined the secondary economic impact - the increase in productivity for local businesses who use the airport. More than 80% of general-aviation flights are business-related, carrying line managers, technicians, and salespeople.

Here's a typical scenario: You're an account manager for a Painesville manufacturer. Eight o'clock Monday you get a call from your customer in Dekalb, IL. He needs you and an engineer on-site as soon as possible. If you drive, you get there at the close of the business day. Work into the night to solve his problem, drive back the next day. You're gone two days and with IRS milage rates, it's a $500 trip.

You could fly commercial. But by the time you drive from Painesville to Hopkins, park, and convince Security that you don't have a bomb in your BVDs, you've missed the last direct flight to Chicago. Your best option connects through Cincinnati. You get to O'Hare at 3:30. By the time you rent a car and drive out to Dekalb, it's the close of business. You don't save any time flying commercial, and the trip costs $1200.

But if you can rent a plane at Lost Nation, you're off the ground by 11:00. You fly direct to the Dekalb Municipal airport. The airlines only serve 250 cities, but there are five thousand local airports across the country. By 2:30 you're solving your customer's problem, instead of cooling your heels with a Cinnabon in Cincinnati. At the close of business, you're wrapping up instead of just arriving. You fly home that evening and you're back at work Tuesday morning. You've saved an entire business day for two key employees, and the cost of the trip is half of what it costs to fly commercial.

Business aviation means business productivity, which means jobs. Now more than ever, the Lake County economy needs the Lake County Airport.

So now I'm a music reviewer

2010-01-26T02:07:00.002-05:00

De-metaling after taking DrummerBoy to a show at Peabody's. Scale the Summit, Devin Townsend, Cynic, and Between the Buried and Me. We were right up front, and I mean RIGHT up FRONT. We used the first moshing to get up to the 2nd row and I braced against the stage for the next three hours. DrummerBoy sat on stage for the last set.

I liked Scale the Summit. Soundscapes of prog-metal. They'll never headline an arena, but in 20 years they'll be co-billed on the Dream Theater reunion tour.

Devin Townsend... imagine Lord Voldemort as a (really talented and REALLY happy) metal singer with a big mourth full of large teeth and a rubber face. Devin loves his job, it really shows. During one song he yelled, "I WANNA SEE A MOOOSSHH PIIIT FROM THE FROOONT TO THE BAAACK!!" then said, "No, just kidding. Group hug." Seems like a really fun guy, and he's got amazing vocal chops. Two octaves plus demonscream, I have to give him the props.

Cynic is psychedelic yoga prog-metal. Yes, really. They had the crowd do a basic yoga stretch mid-set, then played a song to "take you into your mind" and "let you focus on your breathing". Far out, man. Good music, but please lose the Vedic/Zen tutorial voice-over between songs. I do overtly religious music, but only in venues where it's expected (i.e., church, Sunday morning.) I expected them to end the set with "Across the Universe."

BTBAM was... impressive. Incomprehensible, mind you, but very impressive. Baritone screaming alternating with lyrical guitar work. I liked the bluegrass bit they did 2/3 through. That shows confidence. The band members stuck around after to shake hands and be nice.

All in all, it was an interesting evening, and I was very glad to have had the earplugs.

A musing on mathematics and the existence of God

2009-12-08T10:38:00.002-05:00

Either humans are capable of understanding everything in the universe or we're not. Given the facts of our fallible, fragile, and finite conciousness and comprehension, "we're not" is far more likely.

Just have a look at the Euler formula: e^ipi+1=0. It's a beautiful mathematical expression that contains all the fundamentals of mathematics: the fundamental constants e, i, pi, 1, and 0; and the fundamental operations addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and equality.

The constants in this elegant equation are all vitally important for describing and understanding reality. One is unity - existence iteself. Zero is nothing, except that it's not really nothing. (I had an interesting discussion a week or so ago with a very smart friend who noted that zero actually carries more semantic meaning than one. In a digital signal, no-voltage can mean Zero, or it can mean Off. Which is which makes a big difference.)

Pi of course is the ratio of the radius of a circle to its circumfrence. E is the natural logarithm, which is useful in all sorts of calculations involving real-world phenomena such as fluid flow. And note that both e and pi are by defintion irrational numbers - in any base number system (except base e or base pi), their decimals repeat *infinitely*.

And then there's i, which again is very useful for describing real-world phenomena, especially fractals, which shows the similarity between the jaggedness of the cost of Norway as seen from space, and the jaggedness of a pebble in a fjord when seen under a microscope. i is defined as the square root of negative one, a number that cannot exist in the real world. It's called "the *imaginary* number."

So... if the infinite, the irrational and the imaginary are so valuable in describing the reality that we *can* understand, why is it so difficult for people to accept the existence of an infinite, trancendent, and unseen God that we *cannot* understand?

Bleg for the Big Apple

2009-10-26T11:23:00.003-05:00

My son has the chance to go to New York City with his Honors Social Studies class.

To raise the $500 he needs, he's selling candy bars for $1 each. (We buy them wholesale, he makes about .50 on each one.)

If you'd like to buy a few, please click the PayPal button and send me your sweet tooth preferences and shipping info. (We get charged a 3% fee for credit card payments.)

Thanks in advance for your support!

An AUP for kids

2009-09-10T10:10:00.004-05:00

For your consideration...

-------------------------

Parent-child agreement regarding the use of electronic communications devices and services

A. Definitions

1. The terms us, we, and our refer to the parents.

2. The terms you and yours refer to the minor (under age 18) child or children.
3. The term electronic communications devices and services (ECDS) is to be interpreted as broadly and inclusively as possible, including (but not limited to) laptop, computer, desktop, netbook, iPhone, iPod, cellphone, mobile device, internet, web, web-based service, website, online, social networking site, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, email, IM, AIM, SMS, texting,IRC, chat, etc.
4. The term data is to be interpreted as broadly and inclusively as possible, including (but not limited to) documents, files, MP3s, photos, pictures, movies, videos, texts, messages, posts, programs, applications, plugins, etc.

B. Assumptions

1. We love you and want the best for you, now and in the future.

2. We expect the best from you, now and in the future.
3. You're a Good Kid and worthy of our trust.
4. We recognize that the 21st century is a different place than the age in which we grew up, and that the world you will inhabit as an adult is one that we can scarcely imagine. We have the responsibility to prepare you for that world. We hope that you can see what a daunting task that is for us.
5. The fluent and correct use of ECDS is an important skill for the 21st century. In learning these skills, you will make mistakes. Our job is to help you learn from them.
6. The digital footprint you create is global and permanent. You can expect potential dates, friends, coworkers, employers, and customers to look you up online.
7. As your parents, we are legally responsible for you and for your actions.
8. The application of law as regards ECDS is still evolving. Teenagers have faced lifelong branding as felony sex offenders for sending racy cellphone pictures to their friends. Others have been sued for downloading music.
9. As your parents, we have the legal authority and responsibility to impose appropriate discipline for misuse of privileges.
10. We have a legal and moral responsibility to notify the appropriate authorities if we have knowledge that a minor is (or might be) in danger.
11. You have no expectation of privacy as regards the use of ECDS. We have the right to access your websites, hard drive, cellphone, iPod, etc. at any time.
12. Your access to ECDS is a privilege and not an entitlement, and may be revoked by us in part or in whole at any time, for any reason, without recourse by you.

C. Terms

In order to have continued access to ECDS while a minor child living at home, you agree to:

1. Provide us with a correct and complete list of all websites, services, subscriptions, devices, etc, together with username and password for each
2. Keep that list updated in a timely fashion.
3. Remove data that we deem inappropriate.
4. Cancel memberships or subscriptions that we deem inappropriate.

For our part, we agree to:

1. Not eavesdrop unreasonably on your conversations with your friends.
2. Not reveal personal confidences unless a person's safety is in danger. (See B.10.)
3. Not post under your name without clearly identifying ourselves as your parents posting under your ID.
4. Not remove material posted by you without notifying you.
5. Not permanently cancel, revoke, or delete accounts or data without your agreement, unless we deem it necessary to protect you.
6. To listen to your reasonable arguments regarding our decisions and actions.

----------------------

Now, I think this is a pretty reasonable agreement. When I proposed this to my teenage son, he protested that that this would give us access to his friends' Facebook information that they had agreed to reveal to him, but not to us.

Interesting argument.

What's your take? (I have my own opinion, but I'll reserve it pending comments.)

The "New Normal"?

2009-06-15T07:53:00.005-05:00

This was originally posted to an email list of educators who are ruminating on the future of educational technology in the light of Blackboard's acquisition of ANGEL.

Riffing on Neil's #5 (you only make one major change like this in your career / no one ever got fired for choosing IBM) and Joe's note re long-term company viability....

The comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" had a story arc (still ongoing) involving a character who developed terminal cancer. When she entered hospice, she remarked to her husband, "So... this is the 'new normal'."

"New Normal"...hmm.

I'm creaky enough to remember a startup company (a spinoff of the implosion of Control Data) that marketed a cool little CBT authoring application for the Mac called "Course of Action." For developers of interactive multimedia computer-based instruction, Authorware was *not* the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It beat sliced bread hands-down.

Partly as a result, Authorware was soon purchased by Macromind, Inc. (a larger company that had a world-beating animation program for the Macintosh called Director); the merged company being called Macromedia. Macromedia was HUGE. They OWNED the market for interactive multimedia.

Then Tim Berners-Lee and a few friends came up with HTML and HTTP.

Authorware and Director did not do well over HTTP.

Anyone here still use Director or Authorware?

Now, most of us are used to the idea that Things Change. We're pretty much okay with that, and we're pretty good at explaining changes - that's why we went into this business, right? (Okay, it's why *I* went into this business. YMMV.)

But we went into this gig expecting the changes to be incremental, not fundamental. We did NOT expect the world to turn upside-down every few years (Howard Rheingold and John Perry Barlow excepted).

But look what's happened:

The World Wide Web

cellphones

broadband

iPods

wikis

blogs

VOIP

RSS

YouTube

iPhone

UStream

Twitter

Skype

Wordle

et cetera, et cetera, in saecula saeculorum, ad confusium eterna...

Stop.

Take a deep cleansing breath.

Nothing has changed. Nothing (really important) will change.

Really. People are still people. We all have the same basic physiology and psychology as the ancient Greeks. We all have the same basic hopes, fears, and aspirations. Our tools are different than those of our forebears. But like all tools, they're just tools. They let us do some things (affordances) and don't let us do other things (constraints). But regardless, they are merely tools. It's what we do with them that matters.

The tools we use for learning still let us:

* Examine and explore content,

* Communicate and collaborate, and

* Assess and report our understanding.

We need to remember that the differences betwen tools we used a few decades ago, and the tools we use now, are superficial. We (and

faculty and students) need to focus on the processes of teaching and learning.

But as we know, people tend to have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.

So how do we get the folks we support to stop panicking over the beetles in the bark, and lift their heads up above the forest canopy to note that the sun still rises in the east?

As I see it, that's the real challenge.

An observation about the Maersk Alamaba incident

2009-04-13T14:42:00.002-05:00

Reports indicate that the Navy did not act immediately against the pirates - even when the boat containing FBI negotiators was fired upon - because President Obama had made it clear that only a "peaceful resolution" to the incident was acceptable. He later amended that to indicate that deadly force could be used if the Captain's life appeared to be in imminent danger.

The way the situation ended should make it clear that the U.S. Navy does not deliver ransom to hostage-holding pirates unless it is authorized by the President.

But when so authorized, the Navy delivers it quickly: At 2,900 feet per second.

Business Aviation gets the JetBlues

2009-03-23T13:05:00.003-05:00

Small commercial carrier JetBlue jumped on the "Flying CEO" zeitgeist with a series of clever YouTube ads that poke fun at the image of CEOs who don't want to mingle with the hoi polloi. You can see them here, along with the unamused reaction of one self-decribed flying CEO.

The alphabet groups that promote business aviation seem to be taking a dim view of the ads. That's an entirely understandable, perfectly predictable response.

And it's dead wrong.

It perpetuates the popular image of CEOs as whiny rich men who are only interested in their money and their toys, with the business aviation industry being the chief toymakers.

Might I suggest something such as the following:

Scene - outdoors, general aviation airport. Middle-aged man in suit (carrying jacket, tie loosened) is walking across tarmac to an airplane, speaking to camera.

"Hi. I'm a corporate CEO. That means I make decisions every day that affect the people who work for my company. If I make a bad decision, they suffer the consequences. So, I try to make smart decisions - and wasting time is not a smart decision."

*looks directly at camera*
"That's why I don't fly on JetBlue."

*gestures at aircraft behind him*
"This little airplane gets me into more than five thousand small airports across the country. That's where my customers and suppliers are - nowhere close to the big airline hubs. And when I need to get someplace right away, I don't have to wait around for the next available flight. As a matter of fact, a customer in another state called me early this morning with an urgent problem. If I had to fly commercial, I'd be lucky to get there before noon, and really lucky to get home in time to put my kids to bed tonight. Most of my day would be wasted at the airport. But with this business tool, I can see my customer this morning, and be back in the office this afternoon. That's a smart decision."

*boards steps, looks back at camera, shrugs*

"I get to keep my shoes on, too."

Hat Tip Benet Wilson, via Twitter

Links at LinkedIn leave me a little sad

2009-03-11T15:05:00.006-05:00

I recently realized that the professional SN site LinkedIn has discussion threads.

So today I was looking at this discussion about this article, and in the course of the discussion someone asked about this study, which she described as having "debunked reading and math software."

Now, five years of my career was spent making reading and math software for schools and para-schools. Really good reading and math software. Software we worked extremely hard on. How hard? In the project plans, I budgeted forty-five minutes for each multiple-choice question. Why so much time? Well, each individual incorrect answer choice was designed to tease out a specific misunderstanding of the topic at hand. Further, each incorrect answer choice was specifically remediated in the wrong-answer-feedback, without giving away the correct answer. After being written (a tough job in its own right) the question text had to be tagged, coded, compiled and tested. 45 minutes each.

We also developed an umbrella-sort mechanism using the magic of Regular Expression text-string comparison to do a reaonable job of analyzing free-entry text responses, going far beyond the typical exact-match of text-entry items. (Did I mention this was done on DOS on a 386 CPU, not using semantic cloud computing or neural networks?)

As I said, really good educational software, not just PDFs of worksheets or arcade-game drill-n-kill exercises.

So when I read that some study had supposedly "debunked reading and math software" my hackles stirred enough to send me to read the executive summary of the study. I read a lot of educational research. Not counting the journals I read tyrying to keep up in my field, I'm a reviewer for an international journal of education technology, and over the past several years I've reviewed more than fifty articles submitted for publication. SO I think I'm at least competent to read a piece of research and tell whether its any good.

The ED study is pretty good, though it has some major limitations, which the authors themselves note. It certainly does not "debunk" educational software.

Here's what I wrote in reply:

"Debunking" is rather a strong, and IMO inappropriate word. At worst, the survey reports no significant difference in learning outcomes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As it happens I also have open on my desktop the site http://nosignificantdiffernce.org , which provides a meta-analysis of hundreds of comparative-media studies. The bottom line is that comparative media studies *usually* report no significant difference in outcomes.

And why should that be surprising? If Medium A and Medium B are both *designed to help learners achieve the same learning objectives*, we should *expect* to see no significant difference.

That said, the ED study reports a good deal of trouble in data collection. There was a serious lack of continuity from year one to year two - over 70% of the teachers dropped out of the study. There were no classroom observations in year two. The survey team administered their own tests where the districts did not, and it is not immediately clear whether the software that was evaluated was aligned to those tests, or whether the instruction given to the control group was tailored to the test.

In other words, is the software taking a hit because it didn't teach something that was on the test? Many of these software packages are highly modularized and can be adapted to fit state or local standards. If the software wasn't set up to teach the content that was going to be on the test (assuming it could have been), it's hardly the fault of the software developers.

In addition, the study authors issue some strong caveats about the limits of their own research. The summary notes: "Characteristics of districts and schools that volunteered to implement the products differ, and these differences may relate to product effects in important ways."

It concludes, "Products in the study also were implemented in a specific set of districts and schools, and other districts and schools may have different experiences with the products. The findings should be viewed as one element within a larger set of research studies that have explored the effectiveness of software products."

If the study authors themselves issue such caveats, it's a little over the top to call it "debunking." Just because it's not a magic bullet doesn't mean it's of no value.

Successful implementation of learning technology does not seek to replace the teacher (except in situations where there is no teacher to replace). Rather, it seeks to free up the teacher by assuming the role of content-provider. This enables the teacher to do what a machine cannot - to connect with the student as a person, to coach and encourage, and when necessary to admonish and correct (can we even do that anymore?)

The commentor to whom I had responded thanked me for my response and replied that she had gotten her information from a comment on a post on the liberal multi-author blog Huffington Post. I followed the link and found her reference in the comments section, which was filled with vitriolic partisan ignorance that is beyond my ability or desire to attempt to remediate.

I really feel sorry for people who are filled with fear and hatred for ideas that are different from their own. Can we not disagree agreeably?

The Upside-down Pop Quiz

2009-02-02T12:55:00.001-05:00

Remember pop quizzes? "Class, take out a sheet of paper. I assume you've all read Chapter Three. So let's play the Read-My-Mind Game, also known as Gotcha! Bwahahahah...." Even if you'd done the homework and read the chapter, you never knew if what *you'd* gotten out of the chapter matched what the teacher thought was important. Oh, how we hated them.

A couple of years ago I was designing a new course with a History professor, and inspiration struck. Instead of punishing students for not reading the book (or not getting the "right stuff" out of it), why not provide a positive incentive? We want them to read the book. What do they want that we can provide? Grades! A simple transaction, really: You do what I want, I give you something you want. It's worked for generations of parents and corrupt government officials (until they get caught, anyway). It's called BRIBERY: Read the textbook, and it's worth a letter grade to you.

So we turned the pop quiz on its head. We created untimed, open-book online quizzes for the text chapters we assigned. The questions came directly out of the book, and were designed to be answered while looking at the text. (After all, life is an open-book test.) The quizzes were posted on the class website (Blackboard) the week before the discussion of the readings. Students could take the quiz as many times as they wanted. The feedback to incorrect answers directed students to the appropriate page of the text. We did not give the correct answers. The sum of all the quizzes amounted to 10% of the final grade.

Questions were a mix of high-level, conceptual, big-picture items that required students to integrate ideas across an entire section, and nitty-gritty detail questions that could not be answered apart from the text. Case in point: The text contained a passage from an original source document listing government jobs in Massachusets in 1690. The list included baker, brewer, collector of tithes, person to keep dogs out of church, rebuker of boys, and so on. So we put this question on the quiz: "According to the text, all of the following were government jobs in Massachusets in 1690 EXCEPT..." and then we listed the jobs above, inserting the red herring, "Admonisher of young ladies." Sounds reasonable, but it wasn't listed in the text. (I suppose colonial girls were better-behaved than their brothers.)

Now, I guarantee you, if you ask a question like that on a closed-book test, the students would be lighting torches and sharpening pitchforks, and with good reason. Expecting students to memorize a list like that is completely unreasonable. But it's perfectly reasonable to ask them to read that paragraph closely at least once, in order to kickstart a class discussion of colonial attitudes about the role of government.

Ok, fine, sounds great. Innovative teaching strategy, hoo-hah hurray, golf-claps all 'round. But does it work?

Yes. Emphatically so.

The data showed that most students took the quiz more than once, some up to four times in order to improve their scores. The time-stamps on successive quiz attempts showed how students were driven to the text, forcing them to ferret out the answers. The instructor could see which questions the students had missed, showing which concepts needed extra attention in the lecture and discussion.

In class, the discussions made it very clear that the students had read the assigned chapter, and read it carefully. And since the quiz questions reflected what the instructor thought was important, they were all on the same page regarding both the big ideas and the details. The instructor didn't need to spend time rehashing the chapter content; it became a starting point for the discussion.

So, I commend the upside-down pop quiz to you. Give it a try, and if you'd be so kind, let me know how it works for you.

Yak Shaving Razors - Take Two

2009-01-06T00:48:00.010-05:00

List five useful things you know that others might find useful, but might not know. #yakshavingrazors

I got waylaid in my attempt to finish the earlier post, which lead Tojosan a bit off the path I'd intended. The idea wasn't to detail our own struggles with unshaven yaks, but rather to share ideas, tips, and tools that make the yak shaving - or any other activity - a little easier.

Think "Hints from Heloise" or the "lifehacks" tag in delicious.

So... My Five Useful Things to Know:

1. A dash or two of Tabasco improves almost any sauce, soup, or stew. It brightens the flavors. This is especially true of rich, creamy sauces such as alfredo.

2. Saliva is a remarkable cleaning solution. In reading about the recovery and resoration of rare artworks, you sometimes see the phrase "a mild, aqueous enzymatic solution," as in, "centuries of grime were carefully removed from the priceless painting with a soft brush and a mild, aqueous enzymatic solution." That's not magical mystery mix, but good old fashioned spit. Saliva is mostly water (aqueous) but contains lots of enzymes that break down and soften all manner of organic compounds (aka "pre-digestion"). So before breaking out the tolulene or MEK, rub a little spit on that spot. (Unless of course, you dip Skoal.)

3. Stretch out your guitar strings when you change them. The pitch of a guitar string depends on its length, unit mass, and tension. When you're tuning up a new string, the length and unit mass (.55 low E vs .10 high E) are constant, so the only variable is tension. Problem is, when you tighten the string up, it stretches. It literally gets longer, which reduces the tension, making it go flat.
Most materials (including guitar strings) stretch when they are under tension. You can graph the stress (tension) versus the amount of stretch (strain). At first, the stretch is like a rubber band - when you let off the pressure the string returns to its original length. But at some point, the "set" becomes permanent. The string will continue to stretch up to a point, then it won't stretch any more. That's the point you need to get to in order for the string to stay in tune.
So here's how to pre-stress your strings. Tune the new string up to pitch, then pick it up at the 12 fret (the midpoint). Pull it out an inch or so so you can feel it "give" a bit. Waggle it back and forth, then tune it back up. The stretched-out strings will stay in tune.

4. Experienced cooks know this, but here's how to make a nice pan gravy by "deglazing" the pan. Say you're browning some chicken, or pan-frying steaks. By the time the meat is cooked you've got some stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. (We're assuming it's not burned, just browned.) I used to scrub it out with a scrubbing pad - such a waste of effort AND flavor!

Remove the cooked meat - it needs to rest for a couple of minutes before you serve it anyway. The pan probably still has some fat in it; drippings from the meat. If it's really dry, add some butter or oil, about a tablespoon. Heat the pan till it just barely starts to smoke, then pour in about a quarter-cup of liquid - enough to cover the bottom of the pan about 1/4 inch deep. You can use water, broth, wine, whatever. Use a spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan - the browned bits will come up easily and dissolve in the liquid.

Now you have several options. You can toss the pan in the sink, having saved yourself some elbow grease with a Brillo pad. (Booo! as the CommonCraft folks say) Or you can:

Serve the pan sauce as is and call it "au jus"
Boil the liquid down to concentrate the flavor (this is called "reducing").
Mix a tablespoon of flour with some warm water, then add that and cook until the gravy thickens. You might add more broth for volume or to thin it. (Note - adding dry flour directly to the hot pan tends to form lumps - the hot broth cooks it up into little dumplings before the flour can get dispersed.)

5. Write offline. Whenever you're going to write a lengthy post for an online forum, do it offline in Word or Notepad. Because if you're typing right into Blogger or WP and your network connection crashes, you'll lose everything.

Twitter Tag Meme - Yak Shaving Razors

2009-01-05T17:27:00.003-05:00

Today my postcard-sending pal Tojosan got tired of the "Several Things About Me" Twitter-tag meme that's been going around. He asked for a more useful topic. I replied, "OK, how's this: List five useful things you know that others might find useful, but might not know. #yakshavingrazors"

Yak Shaving Razors?!?!! Say WHAT?

Yes, Yak Shaving Razors. The term isn't my own, I first ran across it years ago on Joe Carter's old Evangelical Outpost blog. Yak-shaving is something that you have to do in order to do the thing that you actually need to do. For example, I want to move a study desk from the garage into the boys' room. But before I can do that, I have to clear out the back of the van. Why? Because the desk is going where the dresser is now, and the dresser is going to move into the closet, where the old TV is now, and there's a bunch of recycling int he back of the van where I plan to put the TV to take it to get it fixed so it can be used as a dedicated game console... you see where this is going?

So a Yak Shaving Razor is a tool or a tidbit of information that helps you get things done.

With that introduction out of the way, here's my list of Yak Razors.... dang. Lookit the time. I need to call in an order of Chinese takeout so we can eat before taking the kid to basketball practice...

Hey, who let that yak in here?

I'm nearly famous on #TCOT

2008-12-19T14:53:00.002-05:00

So I signed up at Top Conservatives on Twitter. Much to my shock and dismay I started out ranked in the 50's but as more folks joined I've moved down, currently 159. Out of over 1600, tough, that's not bad. Plus, I gained over a hundred followers on Twitter. Whaddya know...

They've put up a Drudge look-alike site (http://206.130.122.75/ - the DNS isn't resolving yet) and lo and behold, I'm on the blogroll. (Just for the record, @michaelpleahy, I've never liked the look of Drudge's site. IMO that Courier-bold font is just plain ugly and hard to read. YMMV)

Well, that was scary

2008-12-11T10:37:00.002-05:00

So we get home after a long night. I'm just a bit winded, so I reach for the inhaler in my pocket. As usual, I blow into it before taking a puff - learned that trick after inhaling a bit of pocket lint. Puffer to mouth, squeeze, inhale-

The instant I take the puff, I feel SOMETHING in the back of my throat.

DEEP in the back of my throat.

IN a VERY BAD PLACE deep in the back of my throat.

Much hacking, gagging, etc. ensues. "Dad, are you OK?"

"No!" I gasp. (I note that I can move air, and that this is a Good Thing. I had been contemplating how to give myself a Heimlich.)

A laundry basket, then a trash can appear in my tears-on-glasses-blurred field of vision. The noises I"m making, it's clear Dad's gonna blow chunks. Or eject a hairball. Or something, but get the man a trash can.

Cough, hack, hack, cough... the THING goes down. Sort of.

"Water!" It appears, is consumed, helps somewhat.

"Kids, I think I just swallowed a quarter." I contemplate driving myself to the ER, leaving kids home alone all evening. Suboptimal.

I do a FOD check of my pocket contents and the little dish into which I dump pocket contents. I also check to see if a US Quarter will fit sideways into the opening of an inhaler, because it feels like I just swallowed something that size. (It doesn't.)

FOD check reveals that of the four tire-valve caps I had had in my pocket (I'd put air in the tires earlier, but did not replace the valve-stem caps), only three can be accounted for.

After several careful breaths, I'm fairly sure that I did not inhale one of them into my lungs, but rather swallowed it (THANK YOU, epiglottis!).

I do hope that stomach acid dissolves that particular kind of plastic.

Cleaning up under Obama

2008-11-07T07:43:00.001-05:00

I was looking at Obama's transition-team site change.gov, looking for some hope. I came across a section of promises to families where Obama says that a person who works full-time should not have to live below the poverty line. Sounds noble enough. Current minimum wage pays around $13,000 for full-time work, and the poverty level for a family of two is $14,000. So, Obama wants to increase the minimum wage. Sounds good for the worker.

But let's run some numbers,and see how this works out for the person who employs the worker.

Since the plumbing business is in a slump, let's look at a hypothetical office-cleaning service with 55 employees. 5 employees make $30,000 - they're the office folks who keep the business running, doing the the account management, ordering supplies, accounting, etc. 10 employees make $10/hr, or $20,000/yr - the shift managers. And there are 40 workers who are paid minimum wage. (Let's face it - while cleaning offices is honest work, it's not particularly difficult or demanding work.) That's $6.55/hr now, going up to $7.25 next summer. Assume a full-time worker works 2000 hours a year.

So the administrative and supervisory team has a combined payroll of 5*30k + 10*20k or 150k+200k or $300,000. The workers have a combined payroll 40*2000*6.55, or $524,000.

There are 20 teams of two workers each, with a shift supervisor responsible for two teams. Each team works all night cleaning office buildings. The cleaning service charges $200 a night. Labor and supplies costs run about $150 a night, which yields a profit of $50 per team. Times 20 teams, that's $1,000 a night. There are 260 business days in a year, so that's a tidy profit of $260,000. Nice, huh? Too bad he'll have to pay an extra 3% in taxes.

Wait - the front-office team has to get paid. Their payroll is $150,000, so the net profit is down to $110,000.

At least he doesn't have to worry about that tax bump from 36% to 39%. But he does have to pay taxes, which cuts profit down to $70,400. Social security takes another 7.6% of the gross, reducing profit to $62,000. Worker's comp insurance comes out of that. Let's say that the premium is $5 per employee per week. That's 5*52*55 or 6875, round it to $6800. So the net profit is now $55,200. That's what the business owner takes home.

In exchange for providing over four dozen jobs and keeping twenty office buildings clean, he gets a decent middle-class, just-above-the-median paycheck of about $55,000. Livin' the American Dream.

But next summer the minimum wage is scheduled to go up to 7.25/hr. That will bump the payroll of the hourly workers to $580,000, an increase in direct costs of $56,000, or about 9%. As you can see, the business is going to have to increase what it charges the customer by about 9%. That's gonna be a tough sell, because the buildings are not going to be 9% cleaner.

Now let's look at what Obama's plan does to this business. He wants to raise minimum wage to $9.10 an hour. The minimum-wage boost increases the payroll of the hourly workers to $728,000, an increase of over $200,000. That $200,000 will have to come from somewhere.

The business owner could raise his rates, say from $200 a night to $280 a night. But increasing his rates by 40% just might result in his customers reducing their demand on his services - after all, they have budgets, too.

He could cut payroll. Each worker now makes $13,000 a year. A shift supervisor is needed for every four workers, earning $20,000. He could lay off six teams - 12 workers and 3 supervisors, saving $216,000. Of course, that reduces his ability to earn money, because instead of having 20 teams now he has only 14. So his gross is now down to $700 a night, $182,000 a year. The administrative payroll is $150,000... looks like someone in the office has to go, too.

Change? You betcha.

Hope? Notsomuch.

The Formation of a Fiend

2008-10-27T22:51:00.007-05:00

This is based on an original short story by DrummerBoy. The original was dashed off in 40 minutes for a middle-school writing competition last year. (Students are given a short prompt such as "transformation" and have to write a story in 40 minutes based on that prompt.) I could not resist taking a couple of hours to fine-tune things, give the tale just a little more punch. But although many of the words below are mine, it's still his story. Enjoy.

-----

The blade loose in my hand, I approach the operating table. It is draped in absorbent, disposable paper. The paper is dry now, but soon it will be soaked and stained. Spread out nearby, an assortment of shining instruments; each with its own edge, its own point, its own purpose, its own part to play in tonight's work.

Grim work, yes. Grisly work, certainly. But needful work, oh yes. Most needful. Tonight a Fiend must be summoned. And that summoning requires a sacrifice.

Immobile on the table, round and ruddy, turgid with new life, she awaits. I selected her carefully from her among her sisters, chose her especially. My free hand gently caresses her gravid curves. I examine her closely on all sides, seeking imperfections, irregularities, sources of inspiration. Ah, here… So. Mmm, there… Yes.

I pick up a marking pen and begin tracing lines on the smooth skin. The dark ink will guide my bright knives. I smile in anticipation as the shape of the Fiend emerges onto her flesh.

Now, the plan complete, I lift the knife to make the first cut. There must be no hesitation. No trepidation. No doubt. No pity. I place the point of the knife on the mark and plunge it down. There is no scream of terror, just a vaguely wet sound as the blade sinks in. I work the serrated edge up and down, around the curve, following the inked line in a circle. Within moments I have freed a section the size of my palm. I lift it, revealing the hollow space beneath.

The sight that greets me could turn the strongest stomach. The orange cavity is filled with stringy flesh, slick with juices. Pale encapsulated embryos cling to the fibrous strands. A rich, sickly-sweet aroma fills the air. It is not the smell of death and decay, though that will come as surely as the first frost of winter.

I lift a shining, curved tool that could be a large spoon, were it in a kitchen. The sharp edge loosens the clinging strands from the interior cavity as I work it around. I scoop out the loosened flesh, plopping it wetly into a basin to be discarded.

My work is grim, but it is not without purpose. Tonight, the veil between this world and the next becomes thin. When night falls, my oh-so-normal neighbors will be transformed into hideous creatures, prowling the streets in search of plunder, mischief, or worse. Spirits, demons, monsters, and darker things will emerge from the shadows. Even the children – especially the children – will be taken up in the madness. This Fiend, carved by my hand from living tissue, is the only possible protection for my home and loved ones. As the sky begins to darken, I hurry to finish.

My arm is weary from the labor of emptying the thick-walled womb. Finally it is left a hollow shell. Taking up a small knife, I begin to shape the face of my Fiend. Tracing the marks, I alternately slice, shave, and saw. I lay my tools down and assess my work. The eyes have no trace of humanity, no pity. The mouth – a leering, fanged slit – threatens to open wide and devour anyone who approaches too closely. It is not perfect, but then, no work of Man ever is. My prayer is that it is good enough. It must be, for the sun has slipped below the horizon.

One last, critical step remains. To bring the Fiend to life and enable it to guard my keep this night, I must invoke the First Power of the Ancients – that discovery that first set Man apart from the rest of Creation. Where my previous labors had borne with them the risk of shedding my blood, now I must take care lest my flesh be seared.

I take the Fiend outside into the gathering gloom. I position it carefully so that it can be clearly seen from a distance. (While many Guardians do their best work unseen, the Fiend is useless unless the foe can see – and fear – its glowing eyes.) Already I hear the mobs, assaulting my neighbor's homes, demanding tribute. No more time!

Quickly I kindle the ancient flame and plunge the burning brand into the belly of the fiend, where a prepared wick awaits. The flame leaps up and threatens my fingers. No matter. The consequences of failure are far worse than a few blisters. The wick sputters, then ignites.

The Fiend springs to life, its eyes casting an eerie glow across the night, defending my domicile against the ravening hordes that even now approach my door as I sit back, safety now assured. Warily they approach to the edge of the Fiend's light, creatures of nightmare, refugees from Faerie, half-imagined horrors bearing sacks already bulging with sweet plunder. In ragged unison they raise their shrill voices.

"Trick or treat!"

Plumbing the Numbers on Obama's Tax Hike

2008-10-17T22:41:00.009-05:00

Senator Obama told Joe the Plumber that if Joe made more than $250,000, his taxes would go up by 3%. That money would then be redistributed to folks with lower incomes in the interest of "fairness." For the moment let's leave aside the "fairness" of the government taking money from people who are willing to work longer and harder than most in order to give it to people who perhaps aren't. (Yes, I know there are folks who work their tails off and just can't seem to get a break, just as there are folks who were in the right place at the right time and stumbled into a gold mine. Set that aside for now.)

What bugs me is this: if Obama is going to raise taxes on JUST the top 5% and give the money to the poor, how far will that really go? Will it really make a difference?

Being a lazy blogger unwilling to find undisputable, authoritative data via Google and Wikipedia, I'm gonna SWAG some numbers: There are about 300 million people in the US. Given the large number of kids and retirees, let's say that 1/3 of them earn income. (It keeps the math simple.) Obama is going to raise taxes by 3% on the top 5%, those making more than $250,000 a year. That's 5% of 100 million, or five million "rich" people who get to pay more taxes. (Note that this is Obama's definition of rich, not McCain's.)

Five million business owners and successful investors will get their taxes raised by 3%. What will that cost them? Well, obviously, it depends on how much they earn. But we want to keep this simple. We know that the very, very rich - the people who earn billions - manage to shelter and hide most if not all of this income from the taxman. And let's face it, there are darned few of them. The vast majority of those five million are small and medium sized businesses who have a handful to a few dozen employees. So let's pick a number, say, $500,000 to represent the average income for this group.
Obama's going to take an extra 3% from each of them. For every hundred bucks they earn, he takes $3. For every $100,000, he takes $3,000. So (taking an average) Obama is going to collect $15,000 a year from each of five million small business owners.

What will that cost them?
$15,000 is a year's wages for a person earning $7.50 an hour.
It's half the starting salary of a college-educated professional employee.
It's the cost of an advertising campaign that keeps a several marketing professionals employed for a month, and feeds business to printers, bulk-mailing service providers, newspapers, radio and TV stations, and so on.
It's two years' depreciation on a piece of capital equipment that will help a manufacturer compete against offshore companies with lower labor costs.
It's the cost of a year of college for their kid - or themselves.
$15,000 taken out of their pocket.

TIMES FIVE MILLION

What will that cost our economy?

But, but, but! Obama says. The money that the government takes will be used to Do Good! It will be redistibuted to the less-fortunate, to those who are unable (not to say unwilling) to earn those Richie-Rich (or upper-middle-class) incomes.

Okay.

I'm all for a social safety net. Again, leaving aside the "fairness" of the Robin Hood mentality, HOW MUCH GOOD WILL IT DO?

Five million taxpayers involuntarily contribute $15,000 each. That's $75 billion. Seventy-five billion dollars taken out of taxpayers pockets to be redistributed. $75 billion taken out of the economy.

How far will it go? Let's say that 10% of all Americans live below the line that Obama will draw. So ten percent of 300 million, or thirty million people, will get checks drawn on the Bank of the Upper Middle Class. Thirty million people will share $75 billion (this assumes zero cost to administer the program). (75*10^9)/(30*10^6) = (75/30)*(10^(9-6)) = 2.5*10^3.

Thirty million people get $2,500 each.

What can you do with $2500?

If you are a fiscally-responsible individual, you might spend it on...
Several months' rent in an apartment.
A couple of mortgage payments.
A couple of months of child care.
A few month's worth of groceries.
A semester or two of community college.
Downpayment on a halfway-decent used car, or cash for a "beater".

These are well and good things, but will they really make a fundamental change in someone's life? Yes, it'll help in the short run. And for some this would provide enough breathing room to get their legs under them. But for most folks living on the ragged edge, it's not really a game-changer. (I know; I've been there. It astonishing how far a thousand bucks doesn't go.)

However. I really hate to say this, because I know how it's gonna come across, but...

I've known folks who tend to make poor financial decisions (and therefore will never get into the middle of the middle class, much less the top). So I know that a good percentage of that thirty million will also decide that $2500 buys:

A hi-def TV
A good dirt bike
A killer stereo and light package for the car
Several months' worth of beer and smokes
A stack of lottery tickets
A "blow-the-wad" trip to the local casino

Call me classist if you wish, but I've LIVED with folks who make these sorts of buying decisions with much smaller windfalls. Folks who let the water or gas get turned off, but they pay the cable bill and keep the beer fridge full.

Yes, you could argue that the money is going back into the economy, stimulating "trickle-up" economic activity. But if we want to plow seventy five billion dollars into the economy, who do we want making the spending decision? People who have experience handling money? Or people who don't? People who are going to use it to pimp their ride, or to grow a business and create jobs?

Does it make sense to take $15,000 from a business owner and employer and divvy it up between six other people, none of whom have his business savvy, some of whom he wouldn't hire to sweep the floor? If YOU had $2500 just laying around to invest, would you rather give it to Trailer Park Tommy, or Joe the Plumber?

I dunno about you, but I'd go with the guy with the plunger.

Online calculus

2008-10-09T08:02:00.008-05:00

A couple of profs in the Math department here are kicking around the idea of creating an online Calculus course.

When I took calculus (shortly after Newton invented it), it was taught in a huge lecture hall. The professor spent the period with his back to the class, writing equations on the chalkboard and saying things like, "It is therefore intuitively obvious that..." (Have I ever mentioned that Calculus was one of the reasons I switched majors from engineering to education?) That's not the way it's done here. Class sizes are small, and the profs really interact with their students on the fly.

That's one of the reasons that Calculus is one of the courses that students like to take at a community college. Still, we could reach more students if we could put the course online, or perhaps in a hybrid format.

One of the profs (call him Luke) is using Adesso CyberPads in his F2F classes. Students can hand-write their homework on paper using the special pen and the electronic pad. The CyberPad creates a digital image file that the student can then sent to the instructor. This is very handy for classes that meet once a week or Monday-Wednesday. If a student has a question on Wednesday night she doesn't have to wait until Monday.

Luke has proposed that we create an online Calculus course around this tool. He's got serious questions about how to structure the instructional content, because his teaching style is extremely hands-on. We hashed thing over during lunch last week with two other professors from the department. One of them (call him Vince) was vocal in his opposition to "canned" online courses that consist of nothing more than a publisher's Blackboard cartridge. yesterday he wrote:

It may have taken me a couple weeks, but here's my opposition to on-line courses as they are currently done at LCC. There's a TV in my classroom. What do you say if instead of me lecturing in Calculus, I just put in the DVDs that come with the book and we watch them as a class? What would people say about that kind of education? In many ways, it's better than on-line, isn't it? At least the students can pause the DVD and I can explain things to them. At least the learning is "synchronous" and they can interact with each other. Plus, I'm available during office hours and via e-mail. Somehow, I don't think people would think very highly of this kind of learning environment. I'm sure students would complain, and people like Jim would lose respect for me. Could I honestly say this is in the students' best interest? Would people honestly believe that this is academic freedom? Somehow, I don't think so. So, how is on-line, especially how it's done in our department, any better than this?

Valid issues. I asked him if I could open the discussion to the wider community (that's you) and he agreed. Here was my initial response:

Vince raises some very important issues.
There is currently no central authority regarding the content, format, or quality (however that is measured) of online courses at Lakeland. The quality of an online course is up to the instructor and the department. As a result, we see a wide variety of online coruses. Some instructors create their course sites entirely from scratch, including self-produced multimedia elements such as narrated powerpoint presentations, recorded lectures, or videos. Some departments have developed standard templates for high-enrollment courses, and instructors have little leeway in the way they facilitate the course. Some instructors use a publisher's course cartridge (which can vary in quality from abysmal to outstanding), and do little other than monitor students' progress. Others extensively modify and rearrange the pre-created content, putting their own spin on it, and use the online forums to facilitate deep, reflective, substantive class discussions.
Classroom teaching shows the same range. Some instructors read out of the book or off the powerpoint slides, some just work problems with their backs to the class, others are dynamic and engaging, responding to the students.
The online environment isn't any better or any worse than the classroom. It's just a different set of affordances and constraints. The question is, is it possible to leverage the affordances (and work around the constraints) in the particular knowledge/skill domain? What do we give up, and what do we gain? What CAN we give up? What must we NOT give up?

A common reaction is, "I can't give up the ability to respond in real-time to a student's question." But let's drill down - what's *really* at issue there? The root principle is that we want to identify the moment that a student gets lost, and at that moment, bring them back on track. But it's not always necessary to repeat information or give an alternate presentation. Sometimes the student just needs a little more time to work out how you got to Point B from Point A. Can we do that online? Sure. It's just a question of how we want to do it.

So - what do you folks think?

CCK08 Connections

2008-09-29T16:32:00.008-05:00

Well, it's about time I got off the dime and wrote something longer than 140 characters...

For the past couple of weeks I've been following along haphazardly with George and Stephen's Excellent Adventure, aka CCK08. Now, my attitude towards theories of teaching and learning mirrors that of M. David Merrill (see P. 59, #10), so I've been letting a lot of the heavy discussion pass by. But last week's notion of overlapping networks has sort of stuck. I'm a big fan of James Burke's "Connections" series, where he shows how seemingly-unrelated things are actually deeply intertwined. I like that sort of thing, even when the connections are a bit tenuous.

John Connell writes about a young man expressing himself through the medium of music and video, linking it to the notion of "postliteracy." In the comments, Jenny Luca asks whether it is just literacy, as practiced in the 21st century.

In the video John lnked, a young person is playing Pachabel's Canon on an electric guitar. I've seen the video before (as have several million other YouTube viewers), but this time the context caused some lights to go on.

John describes the video as having "low production values." I disagree. The video is very well-made for its purpose. The image is well framed. If you are a fairly-skilled guitarist wanting to learn this piece and you have the tabulature, this video gives you very useful information without attempting to be a typical "guitar instruction video." The scene is backlit so strongly that it is almost washed-out. As a result, the player appears in a golden halo of light, with few details of the room discernable. The player's identity is obscured to the point that even gender is not obvious. The hat is pulled low over his or her face, concealing his or her identity except probably to a few close friends. Instead of the typical amateurish "sitting back from turning on the camera" and "reaching forward to turn it off", there are opening and closing credits (with music!)

As an example of a YouTube video, it's *extremely* well-done. Or to put it another way, it demonstrates the "literacy" of making video for YouTube guitarists

The video is also ironic in the connections it makes - and breaks. Pachabel's Canon is a venerable piece of classical music that requires only moderate playing ability, but the modern rock arrangement in the video requires a fair amount of technical skill. In addition, the fast legato arpeggios are played with a sweep-picking technique that mimics violin bowing (many rock guitarists are fans of the great 19th-century violinist Niccolo Paganini).

Now - how many folks are geeky enough to pick up on that bit of irony? Probably not a lot. Was that connection intended by the young performer? Almost certainly not. And that brings us to the connection between Norse Sagas, the Bible, and Weezer.

You might dimly recall from some grade school literature unit that the Medieval Norse (aka Vikings) wrote these long, bloody poems called "sagas." (It would also be accurate to describe them as "bloody long" poems.) The sagas made great use of a literary device called kennings. A kenning is a metaphorical set-phrase such as "sea-steed" (sailing ship) and "swan-road" (ocean). But the kennings were not just general poetic riddles; they had very specific cultural connotations - baggage, if you will. So a kenning that refers to a shipwreck doesn't refer to just any shipwreck, but the shipwreck that tragically took the life of the young man who was fleeing his father's undeserved wrath and and and... they packed a lot of meaning and emotion, these kennings. You can think of them as a sort of cultural zip file. The listeners (sagas were originally an oral tradition) "got" the deeper references because they were literate in the context of their culture.

I'm thinking that this cultural awareness is a pretty key concept.

For example, a great deal of Western culture (and I don't mean rodeos) is based on the Bible. But a lot of folks nowadays aren't all that familiar with The Book. Case in point, the phrase "The writing's on the wall." Where does that phrase originate? The situation has gotten to the point that schools are starting to teach classes called "The Bible as Literature" in order to acquaint students with their greater cultural heritage. These students may not understand "mene" but they sure understand "meme."

So what does this all mean? Good question. I think I'm still constructing that.

Oh - for a different take on Pachabel's Canon (complete with its own set of musical memes),watch this.

This post was lovingly handcrafted in Notepad, since Blogger's crummy WYSIWYG editor doesn't work right, and doesn't put target="_blank" in its hyperlinks. And folks wonder why I don't post more often...

Salami-Scented Puppy Poots

2008-08-29T00:15:00.001-05:00

Also posted at Dadosphere.

Ah, the fun of getting into the back-to-school routine. The packing the backbacks. The setting out of the clothes - and the shoes - and the socks - and the underwear. The making of lunches. The parental verification of said lunches to ensure they do not consist solely of Rice Krispy Treats and Little Debbie Nutty Bars.

Actually, the kids are pretty good about their lunches. Herself (the 5th grader) and Mr. Brown (the 3rd grader) got out the new half-pound package of salami and made their sandwiches (two slices of salami between two slices of bread, no condiments). They packed some fruit, filled their water bottles, and packed it all back in the fridge. As I said, good kids.

Good, but not quite perfect. They put *almost* everything back into the fridge. But something was forgotten, something left behind.

But it was not neglected for long.

I came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, and found Duke the Amazing Canine blissed -out under the table, loving licking the inside of the now-empty salami package. He was in hound-dog heaven.

I summoned Herself. The following conversation ensued:

Herself: "Duke! You're not supposed to eat the salami!"

Duke: "Buurp!"

I kid you not. It was *perfectly* timed. That dog has a future in stand-up comedy, I tell you.

That's a good thing, too. Because now, several hours later, it's quite clear that Glade *won't* be hiring him to develop new air fresheners. :-/

Hello!

2008-07-18T11:58:00.000-05:00

I really didn't intend for a month to go by with no posting. I've actually been pretty busy given that it's summer.

Word art

2008-06-16T13:49:00.007-05:00

Wordle.net is a cool site that creates a word cloud based on text that you give it. Here's what happens when you feed it the text of Ephesians 1, and the text of Romans:

The fish shape just sort of happened on its own.

Sometimes the lights go on after lights-out

2008-06-12T08:53:00.002-05:00

Sometimes you Just. Want. Them. To. Go. To BED!!! But you should never (Never!) pass up an opportunity to talk to your teenager. Even when you know that tomorrow AM will Not Be Fun as a result.

The Karate Kid boarded the Clue Bus tonight:

Last year he was State Champ in his martial arts division. But as he approached his teens he decided that he was bored in karate class, and didn't really want to go, and, and, and. He hasn't really focused on martial arts in about six months.

So tonight we're talking about this and that and the other thing, and I offhandedly remind him just how gifted he is in martial arts. (He really and truly is, and that's not just Daddy pride.) He gets inspired to get physical. Ignoring the fact that I've told him to go to bed already - twice - I help him stretch (his foot reaches over my head!?!)

He then heads downstairs to work off some energy on the punching bag.

Ten minuntes later he comes back upstairs, red skinned, sweating, in tears. His leg angle is All Wrong! His foot is like This and it should be like That! "I. Can't. Do. Anything!!!" he wails. That's right, kiddo. No matter how gifted you are, if you don't use it, you lose it.

I give him a cool wet washcloth for his face. Send him to bed. A few minutes later, the light is still on. He says needs to listen to some music and write down his goals for the summer.

That's cool by me.

I'm not an edupunk

2008-06-06T14:49:00.009-05:00

"edupunk" is an idea that's been tossed around recently on Twitter and various blogs.

It seems to resonate with a lot of folks, embracing the ideas of do-it-yourself, anti-authority, share and share alike, and so on. The anti-corporate part of it resonates with Blackboard-bashers as well.

But though I share many of these values, I'm just not comfortable with the label. It carries a lot of baggage. We don't really want total anarchy in the classroom, do we? We do have goals and objectives for our students, don't we? We may rebel against giving multiple-choice tests, but we do want students to know that the Civil War happened before WW2, right? Is CBGB really a learning environment that we want to emulate, with used needles littering the vomit-stained floors? (Given, there are some students stuck in facilities not much better.) Is Sid Vicious really a better role model than Jaime Escalante?

I just can't get into punk as a model for learning. I never was a punk; I never wanted to be a punk. But what if we took some of those ideals and recast them slightly?

We can protest against injustice and foolishness when we see it.
We can use the good things of the past, and update them to be relevant for today.
We can collaborate to create new things out of old things.
We can share and learn together.
We can celebrate our individual unique styles.
We can join our voices in harmony rather than screaming and spitting on each other.

Yeah, that's it. I'm not an edupunk. I'm an edufolkie.

Besides, at my age it's a lot easier to grow a ponytail than a mohawk.

I wrotez another poem!

2008-05-21T15:04:00.003-05:00

A friend at work had a baby shower not long ago. It's her second child. I found out about it at the last minute - she works in another department and word didn't filter over to me until the very last minute. I didn't have time to run out and buy her a present, so I sat down and wrote her a little poem:

You're an old hand by now
You know how it goes:
The burping, the bathing,
The playing with toes.

You've got all the gear
A new parent can use
The teether, the toys,
All in soft pastel hues.

You've been there and done that,
It's same-old, same-old.
Same song, different verse,
You're on a parenting roll

You don't need my advice
So I'll say not a peep,
But just leave you with this:
While you can, get some sleep!

On persistence in job-hunting

2008-05-05T22:55:00.002-05:00

This seems to be the time of year when lots of folks are job-hunting, especially new graduates and educators looking for a new gig. You send out resumes and cover letters by the ream, it seems, and get enough rejection letters to wallpaper a room.

Way back in 1988 I finally escaped grad school and moved out of state with five hundred bucks cash. I lived with my sister until I was able to find a place of my own. I put my newly-minted M.Ed to good use bussing tables and washing dishes on the night shift at the local diner. (This was actually a great gig - I ate free, had the days open to job-hunt or work temp, and it was a block from my sister's apartment.)

I signed up with a temp agency and got steady if varied work doing data entry and other semi-menial office tasks. (The upside is that I worked with many different computer systems in many different companies. This gave me a real feel for the user experience in interface design, as well as exposure to a wide range of working environments.)

I also joined the local NSPI chapter to get to know local professionals. I looked for companies that were looking for instructional designers. I finally found one that seemed to be doing what I wanted to do. So I applied for a tech writer job and was turned down after the interview. I applied again or another writing job - and was turned down.

I really wanted to work for these folks - they were rising stars. An opening appeared for an instructional designer. But by this time I despaired of ever getting in with them. But a wonderful wise lady at an NSPI meeting suggested that I try one more time. About the same time I had read the Bible story of the widow and the unjust judge. The old lady essentially pestered the judge into hearing her case.

So I applied one more time, and this time I got the job!

A couple of years later I'm working on a project at about 9 at night, and my boss Larry is puttering in his office. (Larry = cross between Gene Wilder and Albert Einstein with a dash of Groucho Marx.) He calls out, "Hey, Corrie - I was clearing out my resume' file, and came across yours. Now I know why we hired you!"

"Yeah? What's that?" I asked, wondering what golden phrase on my resume' had finally opened the door.

Larry replied, "There are six copies of it in the file!"

A thing of beauty

2008-05-05T16:33:00.003-05:00

Tweetwheel shows you a picture of your twitter connections. Here are mine:

Falsifiability and Christianity

2008-05-02T14:41:00.004-05:00

For the past day or so, fellow twitterers "Peter Rock," Clay Burell, and I have been having a mostly-civil discussion of religion over at Pete's blog. At one point I noted:

Just produce a corpse/set of bones/ossuary/occupied grave (with good provenance, of course) that can be positively identified as belonging to a 1st-century CE itinerant rabble-rouser/rabbi/healer/preacher named Y’shua Ben Y’suf, of Nazareth (or Capernum), where the body is that of a robust man in his early thirties, and has been scourged and crucified in the Roman manner.

Clay suggested that the falsifiability argument is silly - we can't find Adam's grave, either.

But it's not silly. Not at all. You see, it's not possible to disprove any other religion. You can argue that their teachings are silly, or dangerous, or inconsistent with archaeology, but it is not possible DISPROVE them. But it IS possible to disprove Christianity. It may nt be probable, but it is possible. There've even been novels written exploring what might happen if someone discovered the body of Jesus.

Why is it such a big deal?

Because the Empty Tomb is absolutely central to Christianity. Paul wrote, "If Christ is not risen, then all our teaching is in vain, and I am the most miserable of men, for I have been spreading false hope."

But how did this belief get started? The earliest written documentation of the belief in a literal resurrection are the letters of Paul, written ~55CE. They clearly show that belief in a literal, physical resurrection was central to "The Way." The earliest copies of the first Gospel to be written, Mark, include the discovery of the empty tomb.

Jesus was not buried in some common grave in a potter's field. He was buried in a rich man's tomb, and a guard was set over it by the Romans at the specific request of the Sanhedrin. And then the tomb was empty.

So what happened?

Muslims believe that it's wasn't Jesus, but someone else who was crucified that day. There was a last-minute switch. The only evidence they cite is the Q'ran. That's the only evidence they need. Mohammed said it happened that way? Case closed.

It's been suggested that Jesus wasn't really dead, and that he revived in the cool tomb. This of course flies in the face of modern trauma medicine and what we know about the physiology of crucifixion. (Not to mention the fact that the professional executioners were so sure he was dead that they didn't bother to break his legs.)

Maybe the disciples stole the body? Interesting hypothesis. Not a shred of supporting evidence, unfortunately. First of all, the record shows that the disciples didn't understand that Jesus would rise again. They thought he was dead and gone. Second, they were unsophisticated country folks, not exactly the sort of calculating crew that could pull off a truly world-class burglary and cover-up - and do it almost literally overnight. Besides, as Watergate felon Chuck Colson notes, conspiracies *always* fall apart. The conspiracy idea also omits the fact that the disciples were devout Jews, who would NOT about to defile themselves on the first Sabbath of Passover by handling a dead body.

There's an argument that the story is derived from Mithraism, which shares some interesting similarities - a demi-god hero who goes to the underworld and returns, a ritual meal, baptism. The first problem with this idea is culture. Mithraism was a secret cult popular among Roman soldiers. The first followers of Jesus were Jews - the last people you'd find adopting practices of the Roman soldiers. The second problem is time. Jesus died in the year 30CE. Paul wrote his letters around 55-60, after spending five years or so travelling around (sometimes with Luke).

Twenty years is nowhere near enough time for the folklore of Mithras to get jumbled up with the folklore of Jesus. There are folks *today* in the hills of Kentucky who sing songs their ancestors brought over from Scotland and England, and the songs are nearly identical to the "folk songs of the British Isles" collected by F. J. Child in the late 1800s.

There are a couple of other twists to the story that I find interesting. Both speak to the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts of Easter morning.

First, no one is recorded as having witnessed the moment of the resurrection itself. This is THE most dramatic moment in human history. If you were writing fiction, wouldn't you have someone there who could later say, "I was weeping next to the body when suddenly there was a blinding light and the sound of angels singing..."? But instead, we get two women who find the tomb empty and are bewildered. Women were not considered reliable witnesses in those days. They could not even testify in court. So not only do we not have any witness to the resurrection itself, the witnesses we do have are suspect.

It may seem counterintuitive at first, but those facts strengthen the case for the Gospels being collections of eyewitness testimony. If they're fiction, they're pretty bad fiction.

When the disciples started seeing Jesus alive again, they got excited and started talking about it. Just a few weeks later at Shauvot (the Jewish harvest festival akak Pentecost) they caused a big ruckus. (See Acts 2.) The Romans and the Sanhedrin had plenty of motive to haul out the body of Jesus and shut down these fanatics. It should have been easy - if they could have located the body. :-)

It all adds up

2008-04-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

My wife was having a conversation with The FMO (age four-and-a-half) the other day:

FMO: "Mommy, is one hundred and three the biggest number?"

Wife: "No, honey. You can add one to one hundred and three and get one hundred and four. Infinity is the biggest number."

*pause*

FMO (with furrowed brow): "*How* old is Daddy?"

The obligatory "How I use Twitter" post

2008-04-24T13:47:00.004-05:00

"Twitter lets me subscribe to the brains of smart people who are kind enough to think in public."

That's the line I use to describe the wildy popular and addictive Web2.0/SMS/SocialNetworking phenomenon that encourages you to "Connect with your colleagues, friends and family by answering one simple question in 140 characters or less: What are you doing?"

But if you're new to Twitter, have few followers and no idea how to find folks to follow, you may not "get" the whole Twitter thing and give up on it.

A number of folks have made excellent blog posts about how to use Twitter. For example, GeekMommy's post on blocking vs. following is a keeper, and Caroline Middlebrook's Big Juicy Twitter Guide is encyclopedic.

But I'm not looking to use Twitter for marketing or as part of an internet business. It's part of my Personal Learning Network, which feeds my efforts at Viral Professional Development. So here's how I use Twitter:

I became aware of Twitter quite some time ago via several blogs I read, notably Alec Couros and Alan Levine. I'm a late adopter - I wait to try out something new until I see that folks are talking about it consistently. (Kind of a "Keep up with the Jones' - eventually" mentality.) Late last summer I finally decided that it was something I needed to get involved with. So, I looked up Alec and Alan on Twitter as soon as I set up my account and followed them.

When you follow someone, you can see all their posts, including the @username posts directed at another user. On twitter @username posts become a conversation. Quite often, the half of the conversation I see is interesting. (I follow smart people, and they follow smart people.) So I'll click on the @username link, which takes me to the tweetstream (list of posts) of that person, which includes their Twitter profile - name, link, and bio.

When someone follows me (that started happening when got to about 25 follows/followers) I get an email with a link to their tweetstream / profile page as well. I just click the link in the email and in a few seconds, I can see whether or not I want to follow that person as well.

Here's what I look for:

Posts with @'s - that means they're having a conversation with other people.
Posts with links - that means they're sharing resources
Posts that are interesting to read. I like witty. I don't like snarky.
Posts @ people I already follow
A profile that includes a description of what they do - I pretty much automatically follow folks in my profession (educational technology)
A profile that links to that person's blog or website
Reasonable numbers for "following" and "followers." A few hundred is manageable. More than that, they're not likely to engage in conversation.*
A ratio for "following" vs "followers" that's close to 1:1. Someone who's following thousands but has only a handful of followers is a broadcaster or a bot, not a person I want to be feeding data to. That gets blocked tut suite.

If I like what I see, and want to see more, I just click the Follow button. Simple - another brain subscribed to. I don't follow everyone who follows me, or who @s with someone I follow. Some folks only Tweet about their personal lives. Some are way-technical geeks whose tweets are over my head - or al about systems and tools that I don't use. Remember, I use Twitter mostly as a professional-development tool both for myself and the faculty I serve. Yes, it comes with a nice side serving of social chitchat, but I look at that as water-cooler chatter.

So, that's how I use Twitter. I hope to @you there!

*I do make a few exceptions. For example, Howard Rheingold has a gajillion followers, but he actually engages folks and his observations are of course interesting. Besides, it lets me name-drop shamelessly: "I was talking with Howard Rheingold about this last week..." :-)

Schooled Bully

2008-04-23T23:21:00.005-05:00

This is a true story. Obviously, names have been changed. Details have been reconstructed and simplified somewhat, and some dramatic license has been taken in imagining inner dialogues. But it happened pretty much this way, as far as I can tell.

There are two boys. One we'll call Eric. The other, Kenny. Both are in 7th grade at a very good suburban middle school.

Eric has a good reputation. He's a straight-A student, active in extra-curricular activities and sports, and a popular kid. He's funny, cool, easy-going, enjoys playing the class clown and high-fiving people in the hallways. But he's just a little too busy, involved in just a few too many things. It doesn't help that he's a perfectionist. So... he has stress. Most of the time he keeps it deep down inside.

Kenny also has a reputation. He is well-known to the school administrators, but for all the wrong reasons. He undoubtedly has stress, too. But he lets it out in all the wrong ways. He is failing his classes, and proud of the fact. He enjoys vandalizing school property and picking on other kids. He is widely disliked by the other students.

Kenny decides that Eric is to be his new victim. He starts tripping Eric as they pass in the hallway each day. Eric doesn't report this to an adult - that would violate The Code. When you're 13, you're expected to solve your social problems yourself. Eric does his best to ignore Kenny. Day after day, he just picks himself up and goes on. Turns the other cheek. Restrains himself.

He's not giving Kenny much amusement.

So Kenny ups the ante. He posts obscene comments about Eric online, which Eric's friends forward to him. Eric doesn't tell an adult about this, either, despite having several caring adults in his circle who'd hear him out on any subject. When you're 13, certain subjects are on the uncomfortable teetering edge between really gross and quite interesting. The only thing you're really sure of is that you don't want to talk about them. And you sure as heck don't want some jerk you hate spouting off about you and... certain subjects.

Eric is on a slow simmer the next day. The very last person he wants anything to do with is Kenny. But there he is in the hallway, coming Eric's way. Eric grits his teeth and says nothing. And as they pass, Kenny trips Eric and saunters away, grinning.

Now, Kenny almost certainly did not know that Eric is a black belt in karate. A state champion, in fact, with a shelf-full of trophies.

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Eric's foot lands squarely between Kenny's shoulder blades and knocks him into the lockers. Kenny's a tough scrapper, though, and comes back swinging. The boys grapple as the crowd backs away. Kenny throws a haymaker punch at Eric's head and knocks him across the hall, slamming his head into a locker. But Eric takes control of his momentum as he bounces off the lockers and spins around, landing on his feet in a low crouch.

His head *hurts*, dammit, and now he's mad. Really mad.

All that stress he's been carrying is about to come out.

His landing out of the spin has wound Eric like a spring. He's poised to launch a flying roundhouse kick and plant his foot on Kenny's ear. Eric has broken boards with this kick, many times. He's knocked over the large, heavy punching bag at the dojo with this kick, many times.

Kenny weighs half of what that bag does. He's not going *into* the wall. He's going *through* the wall.

Eric is *not* thinking that he could do permanent, severe physical damage to another human being. He's not thinking of the possibility of his family being sued into permanent penury to pay for Kenny's lifetime nursing-home care. Eric's not thinking at all, really. He just knows that Kenny has been begging for a first-class ass-kicking for a very long time, and the time has come to deliver it.

Kenny *is* thinking, though - about just how wrong his earlier thinking had been. He had thought that Eric was just a short, skinny kid that he could push around. And when Eric fought back, Kenny had thought that he could stop him with his best shot. Head punch, right across the hall, face-first into the lockers. Eric *should* have crumpled to the ground. Instead, he *bounced off the wall* and came up locked and loaded.

With eyes full of flame. Kenny looks at Eric and sees his doom. A low murmur ripples through the crowd.

In that instant, a third boy jumps between the two and stops the action - a very brave move, all things considered.

After a long moment, Eric picks up his backpack and glares at the white-faced Kenny as he shoves past. Later, goes to the nurse to get an icepack, and the administration finds out about the altercation. Eric will serve a Saturday detention. Kenny is a repeat offender and will face harsher penalties.

Later that day, Kenny comes up to Eric and offers friendship. Eric's not interested, but he knows that Kenny won't be bothering him again.

A postcard from Twitter

2008-04-17T22:58:00.003-05:00

Todd Jordan (aka Tojosan) is one of the smart people who think in public whose brains I subscribe to via Twitter.

The other day he tweeted an offer of a postcard to the first ten people who responded via DM. I couldn't DM him because he didn't also follow me, so I tweeted @him directly. (If you use Twitter, you'll understand what I just said. If you don't use Twitter, you probably think my rye toast was tinged with ergot.)

He was good enough to immediately follow me, so I DMed him my work address.

Today, I came back from somewhere on campus to find a postcard propped up on my keyboard. I'd post a scan of it, but I'm at home right now and the postcard is at work. (Lame excuse, I know.)

Here's the point, though:

Forget Soylent Green. The Internet is People!

Digital identies redux

2008-03-14T13:47:00.001-05:00

It's bad enough that Al Upton got his class blog yanked, but now a teacher has lost his job over his online presence.

FWIW, this was the fellow from Doha, Qatar, who joined me and Clay Burell on an amazing Skype chat a few weeks ago.

It's not as if he posted pr0n or hatespeech, or that he posted anything offensive at all - according to his account, the problem was the fact that he linked his personal life to his professional life.

It's horribly ironic that recently a number of us were talking about the very same thing, and I concluded that I've pretty much given up trying to separate my "public and professional" online identity from my "private" online self. I think I even left a comment on the post that Jabiz felt obliged to take down.

How can we teach our students to be transparent, integrated, whole human beings if we are forced to compartmentalize ourselves?

Just feed them through the bunghole

2008-03-14T09:05:00.002-05:00

Oh, for crying out loud.

Australian educator Al Upton has been ordered by the government to shut down his class blog. Apparently a parent - despite previously giving permission for their little darling to participate in an innovative, authentic learning activity with other students and teachers from around the globe - got upset that said little darling's picture was not removed faster than it was technically possible. Said clueless parent threatened legal action and contacted the Aussie Feds.

Look, I have kids, and I understand a parent's concerns. And if you read this blog you'll understand that I am hardly a libertine. But the risks to kids from online predators have been grossly overstated. And besides, these kids are in Australia! Are the little darlings really at risk from people who live on the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET?!?! Hull-lo?

Let's just put the kids in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole. Then they'll really be safe.

Addendum:
Nancy White has a typically wiser and more thoughful response over at Full Circle. I'm still a bit too cranky to be wise and thoughtful at the moment.

Something in the water

2008-03-10T09:12:00.000-05:00

In the news today: AP probe finds drugs in drinking water

Not exactly news - I blogged about this last May.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

2008-02-29T12:05:00.000-05:00

I posted the following as a comment over at ReadWriteWeb in a thread about the Economist debates on whether Web technology is making our lives better.

A man universally renowned for his wisdom once said, "There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity and chasing after wind."

Human nature has not changed since the beginnings of recorded history. Look at the Greek or Norse gods, Native American tales, Gilgamesh, the Baghvadgita, the Bible, Confucius, the Arthur cycle, the Edda, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc., etc. You will see the very same human wants, needs, faults, and foibles as we see today.

Want to see a struggle to improve one's lot in life? See the ancient African tales of Anansi the Spider, or the Native American tales of Coyote. Noble sacrifice for a great cause? Look to the Spartans of Thermopylae, Roland at Roncesvaux, or today's Medal of Honor recipients. Soap-opera infidelity? Peek at Guinevere and Lancelot, or King David and Bathsheba.

Human needs have not changed. What *has* changed is the way we go about meeting those needs. For entertainment we download MP3s - remix our own - instead of waiting for a traveling minstrel to come through town. For news we have an RSS feed piped to our Blackberry. To communicate long-distance we use Twitter or Skype rather than couriers carrying sealed scrolls.

The ends are the same, but the means have changed. On those means, though, are industries and empires built and lost. There's not much of a market for sealing wax these days. But build a killer Facebook app, and you might make a buck.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more that things change, the more they stay the same.

Four Barriers? Really? - Fireside Learning

2008-02-08T15:59:00.000-05:00

Reason # 954 why I love Twitter. BudTheTeacher did one of those irresistable "Excellent discussion. http://tinyurl.com/2jfxep" tweets, which led to this post on Nathan Lowell's blog. (Nathan is one of the Smart Folks to whose brains I subscribe.)

He seeded a class discussion by outlining four barriers to educational equity (the "digital divide") and let the students have at it. Great stuff.

Election 2008

2008-02-08T03:18:00.000-05:00

Gen. George Patton vs Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discuss.

The Long Tail doesn't have to be lonely

2008-02-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago Kelly Christopherson wrote a thoughtful piece entitled, "Let’s meet them at the door." In it, he mused about what it's like being an edublogger who isn't Dave Warlick, Will Richardson, or one of the other "big names."

Diane Cordell gave the post a shout-out on Twitter. I'm a sucker for Tweets that say, "@whoever - great post! tinyurl.com/abcxyz," so I clicked through.

The post was indeed teriffic. As were the comments - reflections on how this amazing new way of connecting with peers and mentors has transformed the way so many of us think about our work.

The blogosphere is often described as having a Long Tail - If you sort the readership of all the blogs, there are a few with lots and lots of readers, and lots and lots and LOTS of blogs with just a few.

The Long Tail is often depicted like this:

stretched out along a long, lonely line.

In reality, though, thanks to tools such as Twitter, the long tail becomes something like this,

intertwined with itself, overlapping and intersecting at many points.

We may be "the little folk."
But there are a lot of us, and we talk together, we do.

We do.

We put the "fun" in dysfunctional

2008-02-05T00:11:00.000-05:00

With Super Tuesday a few hours away (as I write this), let's look at the Presidential field as a family reunion. Imagine you're a little kid....

Aunt Hillary has that wierd laugh. She's kinda scary. And though she tries real hard to act like she loves you, you know better. Uncle Bill is great fun, and when he looks you in the eye you believe whatever he says. He makes you just a little uneasy sometimes, though. Momma tells the girls not to be alone with him.

Cousin Barak is cool. He plays volleyball and lets you win. You feel good just being around him. And he says he's gonna take you shopping for toys the next visit. Now, though, he wants to be in charge of the food. But you don't recall ever seeing him working the grill or cleaning fish with the grown-ups.

On the other hand, Grandpa John has been around forever, it seems. He's a gen-u-ine war hero, and thinks for hisself, thankYOUveryMUCH. Odd thing is, he gets along with everyone (even Aunt Hil). So long as they don't cross him, that is. Lawsy-mercy, do NOT get on his bad side!

Uncle Mitt is real smart and has a ton of money. But he sometimes seems kinda fakey, somehow. Nothing you can put your finger on. It's like he's still running for class president. But! He's like Midas, man. Whatever he touches turns to gold. Is that why so many of the other grown-ups hate him?

Pastor Mike is your uncle, but everyone calls him Pastor, except for some of the old ladies who call him Brother Mike. He's really funny sometimes.

And then there's crazy old Uncle Ron. Just don't get him started, OK?

Another lesson in customer service

2008-02-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

There's an old saying in marketing: Make it easy for your customer to buy from you.

Over the weekend my wife wanted to buy a single song from a certain online retailer, renamed here as "acertainonlineretailer.com."

When she went to "check out" she got a somewhat cryptic error message with an email address for customer service. We copied sent error message to the customer service address.

Here's the response we got back:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding your thatcompanywebsite.com download order. We apologize for the difficulty you've had with your purchase.

We have reset the download access and resent the link. You should now be able to log in to your Download Manager and access the music. Please review the system requirements listed in our FAQ's 13.6 and 13.16 at the following link before making your attempt: http://www.acertainonlineretailer.com/.../cms_content?page=762841

Internet Explorer is recommended to allow receipt of the license along with download files. Please make sure that any popup blockers or firewalls are deactivated during the download process. (These may be in Internet Explorer; in your Antivirus program; in any Antispyware programs; and in any Internet/firewall programs you have.)

Here are the instructions for accessing your purchased item:

1. Go to our website (www.acertainonlineretailer.com) and click on the "ACCOUNT" link toward the top right.

2. Enter your email address and password to get to the Account screen.

3. Once on the Account screen, scroll down to "My Downloads" on the lower left and click on the "Access Your Downloadable Purchases" link to get the download screen. After filling in the next password challenge, your files should be listed under the "Currently Active Purchases" section. At the bottom of that section, your downloads will be listed under the "Music" heading. Click the green DOWNLOAD button to the right of each song to start the download process.

Note: Please check the top of your browser during this process to make sure you don't get a popup warning about a download. If this should come up (it's usually a tan-color), please follow the instructions to be able to start the download. Otherwise your computer will not allow it.

Please remember to choose "Save" (as opposed to "Open" - which only gives one-time access) when presented with that option after clicking the download link. It may be best to save the music in a folder (such as 'MY MUSIC' or 'MY MEDIA'), although you can also save it onto your Desktop if that makes it easier for you to find later.

We strongly suggest using Windows Media Player to initially listen to any downloaded music files to verify that the required licenses have been properly connected to the music.

If you need any further assistance, please let us know.

If it's this hard to buy a legit copy, is it any wonder that folks download illegally?

I don't want to write this post...

2008-01-29T08:48:00.000-05:00

...for a couple of reasons.

One, I have not watched and analyzed every video in this list. Some might argue that I therefore can't comment on any of them. (I haven't eaten every anchovy ever canned, either, but I still don't want them on my pizza.) And it's possible - perhaps likely - that somewhere in the hours of humorous, be-hatted, alarmist YouTubery linked above, my objections are answered. (Maybe some kind commentor with more patience than I will provide the link.)

Secondly, I am not a climatalogist, nor do I (ahem) play one on the internet. As far as climate change / global warming is concerned, I figure I'll do what most humans do when faced with changing conditions: adapt. Hey - it worked for the Cro-Magnons when the woolly mammoths went away. (I'd love to see a New Yorker cartoon showing a caveman with a "Stop Global Warming - Save the Mammoths" sign.)

Third, I really would prefer to do other things with my time. For example, watching videos like this (in my dreams...) or this (the boys still have it!).

Fourth, the chance of anything I write having the slightest impact relative to the hours of content churned out by Greg aka "wonderingmind42" aka "that science teacher with the hats" is pretty slim. But the subtitle of this blog IS, "We speak of things that matter, with words that must be said." As an ethologist might say, I've reached my blogging activation threshold on this topic.

So what's my beef with Greg the Hatted? Two things. One, he's misusing one of my favorite rhetorical devices, Pascal's Wager. Second, he presents a three-dimensional problem in two, ignoring a critical aspect of the debate that totally changes the risk-management equation.

First, Pascal's Wager. The whole point of the Wager as a decision-making tool (or rhetorical device) is that it presents us with a pair of linked dichotomies. Either God exists or He doesn't/ Either we believe or we don't. These are binary choices. Either-or. There is no spectrum, no range of options, no middle ground. Your daughter is either pregnant, or she is not. She is either married, or not. There's no "sorta-kinda" in a Pascal's Wager decision matrix.

But the decisions that Greg presents are both spectra, not binary choices. It's not, "Is climate change happening, or not?" It's "To what extent is it happening?" It's not, "Either we do nothing, or we do something." We're NOT doing nothing. Individuals - and big companies - are voluntarily taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints. The question is, "How far are we going to go?" More on that in a minute.

The second problem I have with Greg is that he leaves out a critical 3rd dimension of the decision matrix - to what extent can we do anything about it?

Here's Greg's argument in a nutshell (ok, a hand-coded HTML table):

	We do something	We do nothing
It's not real	I: Economic inconvenience	II: No worries, mate!
It's real	III: Different but livable	IV: End of the world

Ok, so I've oversimplified an oversimplification, but there it is:

Quadrant I: If global warming (GW) isn't real, but we try to fight it, we have some economic disruptions.

Quadrant II: If GW isn't real, and we do nothing, no problem, mon.

Quadrant III: If GW is real, and we do something, the world will be different but livable.

Quadrant IV: If GW is real and we do nothing, Game Over.

There are two problems with this analysis beyond false dichotomies already described. One, it glosses over the nature and scope of the economic impact of making a really significant impact on carbon emissions, never mind the political intricacies of getting India and China to go along. We're not talking about curbside recycling, folks. We're talking about turning out the lights and shuttering whole industries. Massive disruptions in the global economy. Millions thrown out of work.

"Different but livable?" Sure. The Middle Ages was "different but livable". The Amish have a "different but livable" lifestyle. To take it to an absurd extreme, we know that the cattle industry produces a whole LOT of methane. Should we then kill all the cows and enforce a worldwide "diet for a small planet?"

The second problem is that it assumes that we can do anything about it. Maybe we're past the tipping point. Or maybe the largest component of GW is solar activity, or it's just the natural climatic cycle, like the past several ice ages and warming periods. Maybe no matter WHAT we do, climate change is (or isn't) going to happen. So let's look at that table again:

It doesn't matter what we do	We do something	We do nothing
It's not real	I: Economic disaster	II: No worries, mate!
It's real	III: Climate catastrophe PLUS economic disaster	IV: Climate catastrophe BUT we have resources to adapt

See how that changes things? The picture is much bleaker - now we have THREE chances of bad things happening.

Quad I: If GW is not real and we wreck our economy for no reason, then we've ... wrecked our economy for no reason.

Quad II: If GW is not real and we do nothing.. :-)

Quad III: GW is real, but remember, in this table there's nothing we can do about it. So we blow all our economic resources on commanding the tide to not come in. Ecological disaster plus economic disaster. Hey buddy - got a spare soylent cracker?

Quad IV: In this scenario, GW is real. Eco-catastrophe. But at least we'll have the resources to adapt, since we didn't destroy the global economy trying to forestall the inevitable.

We can relocate the coastal cities, build bio-domes, starships, whatever. But at least we'll have options.

The third dimension - does it matter what we do? - totally changes the risk-management analysis.

If we CAN make a difference, then we get one of two flavors of Doomsday. Choose your poison - economic collapse (Quad I) or ecological collapse (Quad IV). Presumably, if we CAN avoid climate change by dint of human effort, then Quad III will be simply "different but livable." (But no, you can't haz chzbrgr. We had to kill all the cows to save the planet.)

But check this out - if it turns out that it doesn't matter what we do, the climate is gonna change anyway, we get THREE flavors of Apocalypse! Economic disaster - but no climate disruptions (Quad I), ecological disaster - but economic resources to deal with it (Quad IV), or a combination of both (Quad III).

If we can have an impact, Quad III is "different but livable."

If we can't...

Instead of Amish Paradise we get Soylent Green.

Mad Max.

Waterworld.

Or this.

How NOT to do customer service

2008-01-24T11:47:00.000-05:00

FWIW, I found out about this story via Twitter. What an amazing tool.

A couple of days ago I wrote about lessons learned while ~~serving time~~ working in the food-service industry.

Lesson #1 is, Customer Service is Job One.

A manager and trainer at a certain Steak n Shake need to learn that.

A Deaf Mom Shares Her World: Steak and Shake Denies Service

I went through the empty drive through and drove past the speaker. After waiting a few minutes at the window, I finally honked the horn and waited some more. After a second honk a few minutes later, a young man appeared.

"Hi! I didn't order back there as I can't hear," I said, pointing to my ear. "I'd like two small shakes, one vanilla and one chocolate."

"You'll have to drive around again so I can take your order through the speaker," the guy said.

"I can't hear back there, so I'll need you to take my order here," I explained.

"No, it's our policy. You'll have to just drive around and tell me your order and then I can take your order."

Believe it or not, it gets worse. Much worse. Read the whole thing.

b-duh, b-duh, b-duh....

2008-01-19T01:32:00.000-05:00

Call my mind officially blown. Scrape up the grey matter and reassemble, please.

Backstory: Susan Reynolds is a blogger who's battling breast cancer. She's active on Twitter. (oh, look it up!) A community of Twittering supporters has materialized over the past few months.

Somehow a TV producer got wind of the story and decided to do a story on Susan.

Tonight, someone on Twitter suggested creating an online map of folks who support Susan to show to the TV folks.It took about fifteen minutes for someone to do it.

The Economist debate on social networking in education

2008-01-16T15:32:00.000-05:00

The Economist is hosting an important debate. Proposed: Social Networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom. (Thanks to Will Richardson for Tweeting on it.) Here's my take:

I have been an educator in one form or fashion for over three decades, with students ranging from pre-kindergarten to post-graduate. Of all the degree programs, lectures, seminars, colloquia, books, et cetera ad nauseum I have experienced / endured, the single thing that has had the most profound impact on my thinking and professional practice is informally sharing ideas with colleagues.

"Social Networking" is just another name for "Community of Practice." The question is, what is being practiced? I can use YouTube, Twitter, del.icio.us, etc. to fritter away the hours with ephemera (and frankly, sometimes I want to do just that!). Or I can use these tools to subscribe to the brains of some really smart people that I would otherwise never meet.

"SN" is just a tool, like a screwdriver is just a tool. You can use a screwdriver to poke holes in a wall, pry open a can, or assemble a mechanical marvel. (You can even drive a nail with it in a pinch.)

It's a set of affordances and constraints, no more, no less. Our students use these tools already. Are we going to try to make them stop using them, disregard them as useless, or will we try to open their minds to using them to learn in new ways?

The story goes that Ben Franklin was invited to witness one of the Montgolfier Brothers' balloon flights. A fellow next to him scoffed, "What use is THAT?" Franklin murmured, "Indeed. And what use is a newborn baby?"

Podcast with Clay Burell on helping students build Personal Learning Networks

2008-01-14T17:22:00.000-05:00

“Quick In, Quick Out” Podcast: PLN Class Design Discussion with Cleveland, Maryland, NYC, Qatar, and Seoul

Wow. I happened to be on Twitter at lunchtime. I noted that minutes before, a fellow I had recently started "following" (because another of my Twitter contacts replied to him, and I liked what I saw) asked for folks to join him in a quick Skype call to talk about the class he's teaching on Personal Learning Networks. I finally installed Skype just last week in order to chat with a couple of other Twitter folk, I had a few minutes, so what the heck - I looked Clay up, added him to my (very short) contact list, and called him.

The 40-minute spontaneous conversation that ensued spanned the globe - literally. I'm no expert in Web 2.0, but via Twitter, RSS, del.icio.us, etc., I can subscribe to the brains of people who are. This stuff is really amazing. You gotta try it.

Sage advice?

2008-01-14T02:54:00.001-05:00

A fellow in my network is thinking about ditching engineering and going to work in a kitchen.

I started out at Burger King in high school. I did 18 months in fast food. Fry station, counter, drive-though, finally A-line. "Hold the pickles hold the lettuce..." - That was me. I was in the Flow. In the Zone. Hard work with a good team is a helluvalot of fun. ZipZapZoop - I cannot be fazed. I OWN this line.

Until someone yells, "TRUCK!" (That's the 18-wheeler with a week's worthe of supplies.)

I earned my keep in kitchens until about a year after I got my Master's.

In college, a buddy was the Grill God of the local Mickey D's. 80 hours/week, because he *would*. One afternoon (after a morning after the "night before"), he wailed, "The eggs were SMILING at me!!!"

He had a nightmare once: He was all alone in the store. Every beeper in the place was going off - the grill, the fries, the pies, the fish... A tornado passed overhead, ripping off the roof and drenching the lobby. He has to go grab a mop. Then a school bus pulls in...

You will sweat. You will dance. You might sing. You will get cut, burned, and bruised. You may get fired for telling your boss he's violating the health code, and bask in quiet satisfaction later when the place closes. You'll get sick of the smell of teriyaki sauce. You will be able to break four eggs, using two hands, in three seconds.

You will understand the following at a deep level:

1. Customer Service is Job 1.
2. Rotate the stock.
3. Clean as you go.
4. You can get LOT done in thirty seconds.

Finally, whatever you do later in life, you will be able to will look back at your time in the kitchen and say, "I've worked harder for less money."

Recalling the previous generation

2008-01-13T02:39:00.000-05:00

My Dad served in the US Navy during WW2. He liked to say, "I served with Nimitz... (pause) ...along with a couple million other guys." He was an Electrician's Mate, tasked with servicing the radars and radar altimiters of the new night fighters such as the F6FN Hellcat and F7F Tigercat. Most of his time in service was spent in Florida. He never saw combat. (His older brothers and in-laws saw their share, though. One was a paratrooper at Normandy and The Bulge, another lost a finger to a Howitzer breech mechanism somewhere in France, another had several ships torpedoed out from under him in the Merchant Marine.) Dad had some good stories, though. Here's one:

Dad was training new F6F pilots (excuse me - Naval Aviators) how to use their radar altimiters.

He explained how the unit shot a radio pulse (traveling at the speed of light) down to the water's surface, and measured the time until the reflected pulse was received. The altimeter automatically converted the travel time of the radio pulse into altitude above the water. (The unit had a toggle switch that would set its sensitivity to +/-50 ft or +/-500 ft. Quite a few pilots died in training until it was realized that they'd left the switch at "+/-500" while flying below 100 feet. They figured it out after fishing a few of the birds out of the drink and noticing the switch position.)

During one training session, one hotshot Naval Aviator was lounging back and clearly not paying much attention. Dad said, "Hey - you don't think this is important?" The flyboy replied, "Man, I'm cruising at three hundred miles per hour. By the time your little ray-di-oh blip bounces off the water, I'm looong gone!"

Hello, Twits!

2008-01-09T17:16:00.001-05:00

Thanks, Sue, for flogging my lil' segment of the Long Tail to your Twitter network.

I was astonished to realize that I've passed three years here. If you're curious about the name of the blog, the first post explains it.

I'm sure there's plenty in the archives that's cringe-worthy, looking back, so I won't. (I do like last month's "Geese" post, though.)

Note - many posts (especially from '04) offer up political opinion from the right side of the aisle. You Have Been Warned. :-)

So welcome, have a look around, drop me a comment if you like.

Remember the old Toyota commercial?

2008-01-09T01:22:00.000-05:00

Note - this post is 90% content-free. It's not exactly "ad ipso factum moribuni garlactorium ibid" Greekign, but it's close.

I've lately gotten into Twitter, big-time. (I'm rapidy approaching my first KiloTweet.) Being the shameless ~~attention-wh..~~ uh, self-promoter that I am, I Tweeted the fact that I'd updated SDDC a time or two. One of my TwitFriends (Hi, Sue!) graciously added me to her feed reader, and was then good enough to let me know (via Twit DM) that the feed was broken.

Being the not-nearly-as-technically-savvy-as-some-folk-take-me-to-be lazy person that I am, I took the low road and clicked the happy "Upgrade Now!" button in the Blogger dashboard.

Fortunately, that process broke a lot less than I feared, and gave me more new options than I expected. (A very rare upgrade, I must say!)

So I posted a couple of short notes, thinking that that might demonstrate whether or not the RSS feed was now working.

Note - I have not set up an RSS feed manually. I assume that Blogger has that built in, for those who want to subscribe to Blogger blogs. As I said, I'm lazy. Or maybe I just have a user-centered mindset - the application should do the hard stuff. Yeah, that's the ticket! I'm not lazy, I'm user-centered! w00t!

But apparently, the posts I'd posted weren't long enough to validate whether the RSS feeder was doing its thing. I needed a longer post. Great. It's the beginning of the semester. I'm swamped with faculty coming to me saying, "Hi. Can I have a Blackboard site for my class?" (This is not a Bad Thing, mind you. It just takes a fair amount of time.) And I need to post a long post.

So, for the benefit of Sue and anyone else needing to see if their RSS reader can pick up a freshly-updated Blogger site, here's a long post. You asked for it, you got it. (If I was less lazy, I'd find and link to an old Toyota commercial.)

Hello, Readers!

2008-01-08T10:53:00.000-05:00

Wow. I knew that'd been promoted to Adorable Little Rodent from Flappy Bird in the TTLB Ecosystem, but I assumed that was because I'd started posting more. Until I added the FeedJit map, I had NO CLUE that I was getting traffic from anywhere.

I mean, no one hardly ever leaves a comment. hint... hint...

So I've upgraded

2008-01-05T22:25:00.000-05:00

A few clicks, and I've blindly accepted whatever new coding schema the Google Overlords have cooked up. I was able to add a map of visitors to the site, though, and massage the layout without hand-coding the template html.

Will this make me a better blogger in 2008? Who knows? I still have to insert br tags by hand, it seems.

Observing the next generation

2008-01-02T15:06:00.000-05:00

So the kids got Nintendo DSs for Christmas.

The DS is a handheld game/communication device that can communicate via wireless with any other DS in range, about 100 feet. You can share games, play together, and swap notes that include drawings via "PictoChat." It has two touch-sensitive screens, the usual game-controller buttons, and a microphone and speaker. Games come on cartridges that insert into a slot in the unit. It folds closed.

A few random observations...

When the boys play together, they are running around a futuristic landscape blowing up evil robots and shooting lightning bolts at each other. Sample conversation snippets: "Over there! Get 'im!" "Hey! Why'd you shoot me?!?!"
When the girls play together, they are training puppies. Sample conversation snippets: "Here, Daisy!" "Hey - she's drinking out of my dog's water dish!"
Gender differences? What gender differences?

Four kids in the back of the van, faces illuminated by a soft blue glow. They are racing cartoon go-karts against each other. Conversation snippets: "Hey! Who threw that banana?" "I got a King Mushroom!" "Balloon! I need a balloon!"

Making use of the affordances of the platform....

To train your puppy, you stroke its nose with the stylus, then speak a command and the dog's name. "Sit, Daisy!" After a number of trials, you can just say, "Sit, Daisy" and the little pup plops proudly down on his virtual derriere. Rub his nose vigorously and you can make him sneeze a little puppy sneeze. It's waaay cute.

In another game you face a monster that looks something like a giant yellow rubber rabbit, bouncing all over the place and threatening to squash you. However fearsome it may be, it actually is a very timid creature. If you yell at it, it runs away.

At one point in one of the games, you have acquired a talisman that must be placed into a niche in a door. Problem: The talisman is on one screen. The door is on the other screen. There's no way to drag it from one to the other. Solution: Close the unit, thus pressing the screens together and transferring the talisman to the other screen. (Darned clever, if you ask me.)

Why can't our educational tools be this interesting, inventive, and engaging? Of course, the DS is an educational tool. The kids are learning to solve their own problems, to find solutions from others, to share, to communicate, to figure it out on their own. They are also learning that if you give something away you can sell more of it.

(The preteen noted that the feature that lets you share games will result in more games being sold, since you'll want your own copy so you can save your progress.)

These are all valuable lessons that will serve them well throught their lives. Pity we can't measure them with a Scantron sheet.

I wrotez a poem

2007-12-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

Actually, I don't write poems. They grab me by the throat and demand to be set down.

Last night was one such occasion:

Grade Crossing, Prairie, Night
Black box silhouettes hurtle across my path, invisible, from horizon to horizon
A million tons of treasure, trinkets, tabletops, marbles, alarm bells
Made in China (and its suburbs) for purchase in our own
A single light the only warning.

Peggy Noonan on "The Speech"

2007-12-07T17:26:00.000-05:00

I love it when someone really smart agrees with me. It gives me hope that I'm not a total dunderhead. Peggy Noonan also thinks Romney did a very good job, and that he missed an opportunity in not reaching out to people of no faith.

"The Speech"

2007-12-07T00:16:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech.

Hewitt may be right. As a political event, Romney may have hit a grand slam given the attention given to it. Or not, if you read other's opinions.

IMO The Speech rates a B+, maybe an A-. It was a very good speech (though not quite Peggy Noonan quality), competently delivered. However, it fell short of Reagan's dulcet tones (and was unsettlingly reminiscent of W's choppy delivery - do I want to listen to that or to Rudy for the next eight years?).

He made no mention of non-Abrahamic worldviews. Buddhists and freethinkers may not be a large voting bloc, but the intelligentsia and media elite hold them in high esteem. A couple of sentences could have undercut paragraphs of criticism.

Minor verbal whoops such as "two century laters" show that he's human, at least.

It'll be interesting to watch the polls over the next few days as the spin works its way out to the folks who not only didn't live-blog it, but aren't quite sure who this Mitt Romney fellow is.

Geese

2007-12-05T13:10:00.000-05:00

Geese fly in V formations.

This lets each goose (except the lead, of course) surf on the wingtip vortex generated by the goose ahead, reducing the amount of energy needed to stay aloft. The aerodynamics of wingtip vortices is well-understood. It's the reason that most modern airliners have "winglets" - those small vertical blades at the ends of their wings.

The winglets reduce the size of the vortex produced by the wingtip, and therefore reduce the drag.

Of course, geese don't have winglets - they're gonna create vortices. But as a group, they can work together. Like NASCAR drivers "drafting", geese maintain a precise relative position to take maximum aerodynamic advantage.

But did you ever notice that the V is almost always asymmetrical? One side is usually longer than the other. Turns out there's a precise mathematical reason for that, too.

There's more geese on that side.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

2007-11-30T15:16:00.000-05:00

TED | Talks | David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell.

This is all just emergent behavior. It all just arose by chance, by the random combining of molecules over millions of years. It has no purpose. No desgner, no creator, no engineer set it in motion.

It.
Just.
Happened.

Sure. Tell me another funny story.

UPDATED - Open Phone Tests versus Just Knowing It

2007-11-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

Will Richardson (Weblogg-ed) starts the day with a thought-provoking post about a student who sends text messages with his phone in his pocket.

---------------------------------- UPDATE Challenged by Barry(16) in the comments thread at Weblogg-ed, I re-read the article. It does not in fact say that Insoo was texting during a test, only that he was texting *in class*. That's the equivalent of passing notes, and hardly a character issue on the level of cheating on an exam. Further, the full article notes that he wants a new phone, the price of which is doing well on his exams. I've edited this post accordingly. Sorry to impugn your character, Insoo. -----------------------------------

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, being battered about in the comments thread and on Twitter. "If they can find the answer on the Net (including their personal learning network of friends and trusted strangers), is the question worth asking?" and so forth.

These are good and valuable questions to batter about. But...

As Charles says in the comments on Will's post, unless the networking is somehow helping Insoo grasp the mathematical concepts, then he isn't learning math. He may be learning something, but it isn't what was assigned. And what was assigned, we may assume, is something that is of value to society. Kids are always whining, "Do I really have to know this?" Cheating - of any form - is that whine put into action. We can argue about the relevancy of the curriculum. And we should listen to our students so we can make it relevant. But they don't get to decide what they need to learn and what they can slough off.

Second, there needs to be a recognition that sometimes you Just Need To Know It. If I'm on an airplane and the engine catches fire, I don't want the pilot texting his Personal Learning Network for a solution. I want him to "Execute the Engine Fire Checklist from memory with no prompting in less than 30 seconds with 100% accuracy." (Thank you, Mr. Mager!)

There's no question that we educators - with help from our madly-connected 21st-century students - need to devise relevant, authentic learning activities that leverage the power of these new communications tools and paradigms.

But it's fair for us to expect that they'll learn what we ask them to.

Black Friday

2007-11-25T01:35:00.000-05:00

Game Somethingerother with #1 son. He can not only keep a secret, but feign surprise and delight. Besides, I needed an SME to keep from buying the wrong thing.

Then, across town to meet the wife and younger three at the sports store. A recument bike has been on the watch list, as we both need to reverse the caloric input/output ratio. Sale price expires in ten minutes. Smart clerk sized us up instantly. ("Not in shape, reasons to live, able to pay.") The box was waiting at the door when I walked in. My airplane will have fewer buttons and controls.

The all-you-can-eat pizza place was *right there*, so...

Hey. I had a salad, and only one "seconds" trip on the pizza. Progess, not perfection, right?

Finally, Sears and JCPs with the Daughters looking for a suitable Christmas dress. 12 tried. One settled on, after I said, "Oh, well. Looks like we struck out. No, we're not doing Macy's. Let's go home." It looks FINE. Really.

Then today, "Enchanted" and "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" followed by take-home pints from Hershey's Ice Cream.

All in all a very expensive weekend. And thank You, Big Guy, for making it possible. Feels okay to blow a bonus check on stuff for the fambly when you've already tithed on it. :-)

Digital Identities

2007-11-21T10:24:00.000-05:00

"Glassbeed" has an interesting post about Kids and Digital Identities today.

I originally had several online IDs in order to keep professional, personal, and political commentary separate. I was concerned that prejudice about my personal views might color people's perceptions of my professional capabilities.

I quickly realized that it was far too much work to keep them totally separate. If someone takes a dim view of my professional contributions because they don't like the way I vote or worship, that's their problem.

Revealing comments

2007-11-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker Wrestler Ric Flair supporting Mike Huckabee «

Back many months ago I thought Huckabee had a shot at the national ticket. It's clear he's at best a second-tier candidate with regional appeal. (That *could* come in handy to balance Rudy, though.)

That "regional appeal" becomes more clear with his recent endorsements - Chuck Norris, Ted Nugent, and now a famous pro wrestler (whom I've never heard of, since the last time I watched "rasslin'" was when LBJ was President).

What's really revealing, though, is the reaction in the comments section at the CNN ticker site linked above. The hatred and bigotry that is expressed there is truly breathtaking.

But it isn't coming from the fans of Chuck, Ted, and the WWF.

2007-11-19T11:43:00.000-05:00

New Technology Makes Aircraft More Crash-Resistant.

"The Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands will demonstrate how the application of Fault Tolerant Control can be used to keep damaged aircraft flying and improve their chances of being successfully recovered. "

It probably would not have helped in this case, though.

Amen, amen, and yea verily I say unto ye again, amen

2007-11-16T09:24:00.000-05:00

Will Richardson at Weblogg-ed:

"At some point, I want one of the goals and outcomes for the students at my kids’ school system to be that they will graduate with the ability to build their own learning networks in effective, ethical and safe ways. But that will only happen when enough of the administrators and teachers understand that for themselves. Only then will they be able to help my kids add dots to their world maps in ways that teach them the power of networks in the ways we already know it."

emphasis added

I think we may have turned a corner...

2007-11-13T00:36:00.000-05:00

...in the war of Radical Islamism against Western Civilization. Not only is there continued good news from Iraq (a "surge" division is going home) but the the enemy is fodder for ridicule. (Think "In Der Fuhrer's Face") Note - the second link above is NSW, non-PC, and ~~potentially~~ offensive. YHBW, YMMV, etc.

A parable for teachers

2007-11-07T11:01:00.000-05:00

From the email inbox:

Once there was a king who decided to set aside a special day to honor his greatest subject. When the big day arrived, a large gathering took place in the palace courtyard and four finalists were brought forward.

The first person was a wealthy philanthropist. This man was deserving of the king's honor because of his great humanitarian efforts. He had given much of his wealth to the poor, building orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the land. The second was a celebrated physician. This outstanding doctor was deserving of honor for rendering his faithful and dedicated service to the sick for many years and discovering medicines that saved many lives. The third was a distinguished judge. He was noted for his wisdom, his fairness and his many a brilliant decision.

The last person presented before the king was an elderly woman. Her manner was quite humble, as was her dress. She hardly looked the part of someone who would be honored as the greatest subject in the kingdom. What chance could she possibly have, when compared to the other three, who had accomplished so very much?

The king was intrigued, to say the least and was somewhat puzzled by her presence. He asked who she was. Then the answer came: "Well, my king, do you see the philanthropist, the doctor, and the judge over here? She was their teacher!"

A large hmmm factor

2007-11-05T16:01:00.000-05:00

What happens when you take public dataset A, merge it with public dataset B, and make the results public - and easy to use?

Betchablog has links and commentary.

A human in the loop

2007-11-04T00:46:00.000-05:00

Astronauts fix ripped solar wing

Sometimes, there's just no substitute for real "hands-on" problem-solving.

We have become masters of automation. Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, it's been all about faster and cheaper. Since people are slow and expensive (especially in space) that means getting people out of the loop. The more we can turn the work over to the machines, the more work can get done.

Until something goes worgn.

Machines are far better than people at performing pre-programmed tasks with precision. Star Wars - the 1977 pre-digital-effects original (a purist, I refuse to call it Episode IV) - could not have been made with human camera operators. But when the machines break down (as they always do), people must step in to fix it.

It's the same with learning. We can design all sorts of systems that automatically mold themselves to the student. We can create algorthims to diagnose and adapt to a specific "learning style", or anticipate a learner's probable errors and stand ready with remediation at an atomic level of detail.

But there will always come a point when a student steps off the design document.

It doesn't happen with every student, but a dollar gets you a doughnut it happens with every "automated instruction system" if it has enough users. Eventually, a student comes up with a question the designer didn't anticpate.

As the old pre-PC "Little Rascals"put it, "Now what, Buckwheat?"

But if we can put a human being back into the loop - someone who can interpret the lost look, the six-days-without-logging-in pattern, the forum post that is so clearly off-track - then we don't have to analyze the content to death.

Just build an additional component into the sysem: a teacher, a tutor, a peer mentor. (If you call them "a network of organic, analog feedback devices" you might even be able to get grant money to pay them.)

This is why we have a human in the loop

2007-11-03T03:18:00.000-05:00

Doctor to fix space station's torn wing - Yahoo! News

Willow Creek

2007-10-31T13:51:00.000-05:00

A Shocking “Confession” from Willow Creek Community Church

Willow Creek has been at the forefront of the "seeker friendly" movement in the Evangelical Christian world. Offer lots of social services, upbeat music, stay away from the fire and brimstone, and you'll pack 'em in. Apparently they decided to do an internal study and found that while the church was growing, the people weren't.

An update on Thunder

2007-10-30T13:38:00.000-05:00

Aimlessly looking at back links (it's a slow day), I recalled the Green Pea incident described here. I thought my legions of faithful readers might appreciate an update. Thunder died a couple of months ago. The tank sits empty, the pump stilled.

Useful web 2.0 links

2007-10-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

From a Sloan-C workshop (yes, I know it's a mess) Burks'/Ray's 20 Top Web 2.0 Applications for Education Below are links to 20 top, stable Web 2.0 applications that are widely-used in higher education. Please take a look at any of these that you have not previously used. Blog http://blogger.com Wiki http://pbwiki.com Podomatic http://www.podomatic.com Flickr http://www.flickr.com Google Docs http://docs.google.com Google Calendar http://www.google.com/calendar/ GooglePages http://googlepages.com Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us MySpace http://www.myspace.com Citizendium http://www.citizendium.org YouTube http://www.youtube.com Gliffy http://gliffy.com/ Skype http://www.skype.com Kartoo http://www.kartoo.com Elluminate Vroom http://www.elluminate.com/vroom/ Second Life http://www.secondlife.com Odeo http://www.odeo.com Digg http://www.digg.com Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com zoho http://zoho.com/ Webware 100 - "the best 100 Web 2.0 sites" Here are links to many more top Web 2.0 applications identified by CNet as being among the top 100 Web 2.0 sites online. You are encouraged to explore these as well: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html Links and brief descriptions of the finalists by category: Browsing finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/browsing_info.html Communication finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/communication_info.html Community finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/community_info.html Data finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/data_info.html Media finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/media_info.html Mobile finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/mobile_info.html Productivity finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/productivity_info.html Publishing finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/publishing_info.html Reference finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/reference_info.html

Now I don't feel so bad about the ALCS

2007-10-25T00:03:00.000-05:00

Sox 13, Rockies 1

California is Burning

2007-10-23T15:42:00.000-05:00

Hundreds of homes in flames, half a million people evacuated.

How long until someone blames this on George Bush?

Age of Wonders

2007-08-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

In the film "Master and Commander," 19th-century British sea captain Jack Aubry is handed a wooden model of a new warship. He examines it carefully, noting its many innovative features. Finally he sets it down, saying, "What an age of wonders we live in."

If he had only known what was just over the horizon.
Since the Renaissance, every age has been an Age of Wonders, it seems. The colonies of the New World had limitless wealth. The Enlightenment promised a new dawn of scientific understanding. Steam would provide inexhaustible power. The telegraph allowed messages to be sent thousands of miles. Bell's telephone transmitted the human voice over a wire. In 1900, the Patent Office concluded that everything that could be invented, had been.

But more wonders were yet to come. As the new century dawned, Thomas Edison was working tirelessly to find a way to produce light with electricity. Henry Ford was realizing that an automobile could be built cheaply if the work was broken down to the smallest task. And in Ohio, two brothers were building a machine that could fly.

Within only fifty years, the electric light, the automobile, and the airplane had totally transformed society. By the end of World War II it was hard to imagine life without them.

Not long afterward, my father went to work for International Business Machines. He was initially set to work repairing price-calculating grocer's scales - the core of the business. Within a few years he was assigned to a new area called "data processing". Engineers had created an experimental calculating machine twice the size of anything previously attempted, with 40,000 characters of memory. It cost millions, and filled a large room.

In the mid-1950's, the most powerful computer in the world had 39k of memory.

Just a few decades later, Seymour Cray was building supercomputers. They were the size of refrigerators and orders of magnitude faster than anything else on the planet. They didn't have cooling fans - they had radiators. Researchers waited for months to get a few seconds of precious time on the mammoth machines.

Today, my kids' Playstation 2 has more processing power than any Cray ever had. For the price of lunch you can put 2 gigabytes of storage on a keychain: 20,000 of the room-sized machines my dad worked on, the size of a pack of gum. For less than $150, you can buy a 500 Gb hard drive. That's 200 billion pages of text - 33,000 college libraries. It's the size of a paperback book.

We're connected in ways Captain Aubrey could never have imagined. You can shoot video with a cell phone, upload it to YouTube, and it can instantly be viewed by millions of people, worldwide. If you have a question - any question - "just Google it" and you will likely get an answer in moments. If you like a song, you can buy it for a buck on iTunes (or steal it elsewhere). You can look up anything at all on Wikipedia, a reference thousands of times larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica - and change it yourself if you spot an error.

Welcome to the 21st century. Everything is different, now, isn't it?

Well, yes and no. True, people today seem to live in a cloud of constant sensory input, resulting in what one writer called, "continuous partial attention." Many of our students can't imagine living without computers, portable music players, game systems, and the like. Others have only heard about these wonders, and worry about what they're missing.

For those of us who teach (and who directly support the teachers), this is a huge challenge. Many of our students know far more than we do about the new tools and toys. Others struggle with basic skills most of us mastered years ago. Every semester faculty come to me and say, "Please get me set up with Blackboard. My students say I need to use it."

But in truth, the technology doesn't matter all that much. Regardless of the tools they use, people are still people. We all have the same basic human needs: for food and shelter, for security, for love and belonging, for esteem, for self-actualization. Under the iPod and Razr, behind the email or discussion board post, is a human being with the same fundamental needs as his or her great-great grandparents.

They just meet those needs in different ways, that's all. iTunes is not so very different than the traveling minstrel of Chaucer's time. It just has a larger repertoire.

A tool is merely a set of affordances and constraints - stuff it lets you do easily, and stuff it makes it hard to do. That applies to tools used for teaching, too. You can teach in the 3D simulated world of Second Life, where people can fly and a student may appear as an alien with an orange mohawk (ok, bad example - that can show up on campus, too). But you also can teach while sitting on a log and using your finger to draw in the dirt (hey - digital interactive multimedia!)

Drawing in the dirt is a quick and easy way to show something - to a person who's there with you. Teaching online lets you bring in all sorts of resources and frees the student from having to be in a certain place at a certain time - but you lose eye contact and facial expressions. Is that good? Is it bad?

Neither. It's just different.

You can't replicate a classroom online. Don't try. You can only work to replicate the results of the classroom. That's the most fun part of my job - helping faculty figure out how to use these new tools to get the same (or sometimes, better) results. Of course, the capabilities of the tools keep changing, and new tools keep appearing. (Some of them are so new we don't know how to really use them well.) We often feel like hamsters on a wheel that's spinning faster than we can run. But we keep up as best we can with what's going on "out there." We try new things. Sometimes they work better than we'd planned. Sometimes they crash and burn. We pick up the pieces, learn from the experience, and try, try again. We have to, if we want to prepare our students for the next Age of Wonders.

It's just over the horizon.

My ride on a B-17

2007-07-22T00:49:00.000-05:00

Our little local airshow had never had a website. I made one for this year's show. (www.usaviationmuseum.com) It's gotten a fair amount of traffic, even after the show. (I concocted a photo contest to drive traffic after the show and reinforce the experience.)

During the show I work the flightline. (I get to tell pilots where to go, hee hee.) So Friday midday I'm out on the ramp, sweating and getting sore feet and a sunburn. (Hey, at least I don't have to pay for the priviledge.) Actually, it's a very nice day. A few clouds, a breeze, high 70s and severe clear. VERY nice day.

Around 2:20 the show boss called me over and asked, "What are you doing at 2:45 today?" I replied, "Whatever you want." (Of course.) Pointing to the fully restored B-17 Flying Fortress behind her, she said, "Be on that plane."

I replied, "Yes, ma'am!" (Of course.)

I signed the waiver, got my ID sticker. Went over to the flightline chief and told him that I'd been assigned to "special duty" until the '17 landed. He smiled a bit and nodded. He got a ride last year.

I waited, waited some more, then we were assembled and briefed by the flight engineer. "You have to stay seated until the wheels are up. Then you can move around at will, go up front to the bombardier's station, whatever, except for the tail and ball turret."

We boarded and strapped in. I was in the radio compartment. They opened up the "skylight" so we didn't bake.

There's a very loud, somewhat unpleasant screetchy sound, sort of like what you hear on an Airbus 320 when it's about to start its engines. I assume it's an hydraulic pump.

I'm on the starboard side, with a glimpse out a tiny window. I can see a LOT of rivets on the right wing and the #3 engine (inboard right side) That's the one that starts first. The prop starts turning. 14 blades, then a cough, grumble, roar. #4 turns, starts. #1, #2. All four engines are now idling, each consuming 20 gallons per hour of $5/gal avgas. A penny per second, just to sit there with the motors running.

The whole airframe shakes with suppressed power. This is no Walter Mitty pocketa-pocketa fantasy. This is a serious machine built for a serious purpose - to defeat a serious and determined enemy.

The sound increases and we start to move. The brakes squeal. From my seat I can look forward and see the ground through the open bomb bay doors. More loud sound, and the bomb bay doors close.

We taxi for a long time. The airfield has no parallel taxiway, so you back-taxi down the active runway to a turnaround at the end. No control tower, and the airport is open, so it's up to the pilots in the pattern to talk to each other in order to avoid... unpleasantness. You can imagine the radio calls: "Lost Nation traffic, Cessna Three Four Bravo five miles south, inbound for Two Eight, Lost Nation." "Three Four Bravo, be advised, a B-17 is back-taxiing on Two Eight." "Three Four Bravo, we'll extend."

We complete the slow turn - the taxiway is barely wider than the our gear - and take the active runway. The engines rev up to takeoff power.

The airplane had been quivering at idle and taxiing, like a dog eager for the owner to loose the leash. Now the leash is off, and the animal leaps forward. The acceleration isn't the shove-you-back-in-your-seat thrill of a sports car. It's not the relentless, smooth press of a commercial jet meeting a schedule.

It's more *purposeful* somehow. We have a war to win, I think. Thousands of people back home have labored to build this machine so that we can use it stop Hitler and end this damned war. I don't imagine what it must be like to feel that, I actually feel it. It's a fleeting moment, but a real and powerful one.

We lift off easily at our light weight, and I think of what it must have been like to know you were thousands of pounds over gross, willing the wing to lift, not being able to see forward but knowing that this. takeoff. is. taking. a. really. long. time...

We climb out straight ahead. I can see out the sliver of window a local landmark near my house. We must be nearly directly overhead, at less than a thousand feet. A phone call while waiting to start engines had alerted the home crew. They were outside and waving as we flew overhead, they tell me later. I might have seen them if the bomb bay doors had been open.

The gear is up, and we get the word (ok, a hand wave and a nod) that we can unstrap and move around.

I realize quickly (with much gratitude) that a pudgy out-of-shape 45-year-old has about the same dimensions and flexibility as a skinny nineteen-year old in a sheepskin flight suit. We squeeze past each other, grin madly, take turns at the waist guns. badda-baada-baddabadda! ("Yah, Sven, dere vas Fokkers above, Fokkers below, Fokkers to da left and right. And alla dem fokkers vas Messerschmits!").

Yeah, funny. But holding the waist gun, looking out the window, hunched over peering through a ring sight... I've seen the films. "Dem Messerchmits" are small targets, moving fast, and they are trying to kill you. The '17's skin is thin. The helmet and flak jacket don't cover everthing.

The moment passes.

This was a media flight. A local reporter was on board, with a camera ship flying in formation to get some shots with downtown or the lake in the background.

Also in formation, a pair of P-51 scale replicas. 3/4 the size of the real thing, and 1/20 the cost.

The crew had removed the "sunroof" - the large clear panel over the radio room. We could (carefully) look out this large opening and have a perfectly clear view of the tail and the sky all around.

I take off my hat, hold onto my glasses, and look back at the tail and the lakeshore below. Holding station at five o'clock high and seven o'clock high are a pair of P-51s.

I know it's 2007. I know those are scale replicas, not the real thing. But for some reason, standing in a B-17, looking out at a pair of P-51s, I feel... protected.

We pass over the lakefront downtown airport, LOW, and hit the airshow smoke on #2. Someone downtown calls 911 thinking we're on fire.

We climb and turn, and I have a magnificent view of downtown and the lakeshore out the open hatch. I make my way forward, squeezing through the bomb bay catwalk to the flight deck. The three-man crew is all cool professionalism in their flight suits. There's a GPS moving map attached to the panel. I try to ignore it.

I squeeze down between the pilots' seats to the nose compartment. I imagine peering through those little windows on the side, trying to spot the enemy fighters. I imagine deadly black flowers of flak blossoming outside the big clear bubble at the very front. Nothing you can do but hope they miss. Bombardiers and navigators suffered the highest casualty rates.

I make my way back to the engineer's station - we're minutes from landing, now. But I pop up into the top turret one more time, look towards the shore, and I can see my house. I wave, knowing the kids can't see me.

We take our seats and strap in for landing. I'm wedged into the radio compartment again. A long, low final approach - the airport neighbors who hate airplanes must be LOVING this! - we cross the threshold, three quick screetches and we're rolling.

Taxing in and shutting down is anticlimactic. As the props stop, I once again think of the kids, now old men, who took this airplane into harm's way. They had no idea that their sacrifice would ensure that my kids would grow up in freedom. They just wanted to get the job done.

I look at the guy across from me and say, "Twenty-four more, and we can go home."

The Ratings Always Drop Twice

2007-06-21T15:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not normally a big fan of noir, but this satire from Iowqahawk is rich.

Note - if you don't get the inside jokes, you obviously don't read the center-right blogs. He left out a few folks, but the "Jimmy Fargo" and "Dragon Lady" references are classic.

Thunderstruck

2007-06-18T23:25:00.000-05:00

Watch this video: Duty In The Desert: "Green Light"

Now consider this: The men who do this, volunteer to do it. Not only that, they compete for the honor of being allowed to do it.

And when they hit the ground, they are armed to the teeth, ready to move out in minutes, and spoiling for a fight.

I'm glad they're on our side.

Blue Löbster Cult

2007-06-14T00:22:00.000-05:00

Rare blue lobster avoids the cooker

Or maybe the Lobster Blues?

Gimme twelve bars in A, boys, 1, 2, 3, and...

I'm mindin' my bus'ness, looking for a bit o' food.
Jess mindin' my bus'ness, looking for a bit o' food.
See a funny cave, lawdy boy don' it smell good.

I goes inside, it's crowded as it might be.
I goes inside, it's crowded as it might be.
Tries to leave, done made a fool o' me.

Got dem los' mah freedom, headed fo' da steampot blues....

The new culture of death

2007-05-29T16:32:00.000-05:00

More Americans support doctor-precribed poison than not:

The new AP-Ipsos poll asked whether it should be legal for doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to help terminally ill patients end their own lives — a practice currently allowed in Oregon but in no other states. Forty-eight percent said it should be legal; 44 percent said it should be illegal.

The incessant "right to die" drumbeat of the past few decades has been successful, it seems. What's next? one wonders.

Something to ponder over a tasty soylent cracker, eh?

Are you an Information Omnivore?

2007-05-09T12:52:00.000-05:00

Pew Research has a new study out on how people use information and communication technology.

You can take an online survey to see where you fit on the spectrum. (FWIW I'm a "Connector", second from the top tier, "Omnivores".)

Here's a direct link to the PDF version of the full report.

"It's quite interesting, and a little disturbing," she said.

2007-05-07T23:25:00.000-05:00

If you read the little thin-paper inserts that come with your prescription meds, you'll often find a discussion of "bioavailability." That's the percentage of the drug that actually gets into your bloodstream and does you good.

Ever wonder what happens to the rest?

Apropos of nothing...

2007-05-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

Gas

I had to return a library video ("The Matrix") today. I forgot to drop it off on the way to work. I had to work late, so I thought I'd run out after the regular work day and before my evening teaching and drop it off. I HATE being late returning videos, since the library charges a dollar a day.

But first I had to get gas, since the "Fuel It or Push It" light was on.

$3.19 a gallon.

My car gets about 15 mpg. It now costs me about a dollar to drive five miles.

It was cheaper to pay the fine than drive the round-trip to the library.

I dropped the DVD in the after-hours box on the way home.

An early Father's Day tale?

A moment of silence, please. Leo the goldfish has died.

Leo was a good fish, well-loved by my older daughter. He enjoyed blowing bubbles and swimming briskly. He didn't let Thunder, his larger tankmate, bully him out of his share of fish flakes.

We don't know what killed Leo. He turned up missing yesterday morning, and a search of the tank eventually turned up his remains down among the gravel. Thunder, the larger fish belonging to my youngest son, was still swimming. (Note - Thunder is not a suspect in Leo's demise. Goldfish die, and they decay quickly. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

So last night I cleaned the tank, thoroughly. I transferred Thunder to a bowl of freshly-filtered water while I boiled the gravel and scrubbed the tank.

But Thunder wasn't looking so good, himself. He was listless, tending to float tail-up. I don't know much about goldfish, but even I could tell that Something Was Not Right with Thunder.

How did we cope before Google? Thunder very likely had swim bladder disease. The cure: Green peas. Yes, green peas are apparently a miracle food for goldfish. Post after post on fish-fan message boards extoll the life-bestowing, heath-restoring virtues of green peas. Green Peas, the Legume of Life.

Chicken soup for goldfish.

So after I reassembled and refilled the tank, and poured the ailing Thunder out of the bowl back into his home, I searched the freezer for a bag of green peas. No luck. The pantry? Success! But since they were far too large for little Thunder to injest, I peeled them open in the hopes that the listless little fish would ingest some of the green miracle mush inside.

Please bear in mind that Thunder is not a fancy mutant goldfish. He's not a lionhead, koi or waikin. He doesn't have flowing fins three times his body length. His eyes do not pop out like marbles. He's a ten-cent carnival prize. A miniature carp. He lives in a ten-dollar tank and eats cheap fish flakes. A grade-schooler's first pet.

But there I was, peeling canned green peas at two in the morning, trying to save him.

Most folks would call me crazy. But Dads understand.

Oh - this morning Thunder looked much better. Maybe there's something to peas after all.

I wouldn't use 'em , myself

2007-05-02T16:56:00.000-05:00

Headline: Freight train with shuttle parts derails.

Reminder to NASA brass considering using those booster segments: Apollo 13's O2 tank was dropped about six inches.

Why I love country music

2007-04-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

In case you don't recognize him, the speaker is Jeff "You might be a redneck if..." Foxworthy.

(Disclaimer: I was raised up on both kinds of music: Country, and Western.)

Jesus' Last Parable

2007-04-06T10:20:00.000-05:00

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?"

It is no accident that Jesus quoted Psalm 22 as he was dying. It gives us an important clue about what really happened on the Cross.

You see, the Crucifixion was Jesus' final parable. While Jesus' agony was horrible, how could a few hours of suffering - even scourging and crucifixion - possibly begin to atone for the sins of billions? The simple answer is, it could not, and it did not.

John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." Since before time began, Jesus and the Father had shared the closest possible communication. Their father-son bond is the envy of every parent, every child. When Jesus prayed, he always referred to God as his Father. And he prayed out loud mostly for the benefit of his disciples, because he knew that God the Father already knew his heart and mind.

When Jesus was in anguish in the Garden after the Last Supper, he cried out, "Daddy, is there any other way?"

But there *was* no other way. If there had been, would God have sent his beloved Son to the cross?

But the physical agony of the cross was only a shadow of reality. You see, as Jesus hung there in excruciating pain - beaten, bloody, mocked, reviled, humiliated, and rejected by men, "he who knew no sin *became* sin."

His chest heaving in its final spasms, Jesus looked up to His Father.

And God, the Holy One, eternally, perfectly Just and Righteous, looked down.

He did *not* see his perfect, kind, gentle, loving Son, the one in whom He was well pleased. He did *not* see the obedient child who had scampered about Joseph's workshop. He did *not* see the eager student questioning the teachers in the Temple. He did *not* see the gentle healer who gave sight to the blind, made lepers clean, and made the lame walk.

God looked down at Jesus on the Cross and saw only sin.

He saw every sin I have ever committed. Every sin you have ever committed. Every sin ever committed by every person who has ever - or who will ever - put their faith in Christ. He saw hate and anger and murder and lies and deceit and slander and sloth and lust and gluttony and envy and adultery and covetousness and idolatry.

God looked down at Sin, and turned away in disgust.

And Jesus, for the first time in all eternity, was utterly Alone. As that terrible emptiness, the full weight of God's wrath fell on him, is it any wonder that he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

And then he said, "It is finished," because it *was* finished. There was nothing left to do but die.

So that He could rise again...

White House Involved In New Scandal

2007-03-19T14:13:00.000-05:00

White House Involved In New Scandal

This is MY President!

h/t Hugh

Peace of Mind

2007-03-11T00:59:00.000-05:00

The Heavenly Chorus just gained a new lead. I've got the vinyl Boston LP I bought with my high school Burger King earnings on the turntable right now. I never could cover Boston. The rhythm parts are pretty easy, and the lead parts aren't all that challenging if you have the Tom Sholtz-designed RockMan (or can dial in a close-enough balance of gain, distortion and chorus). I've even got a decent tenor most days. (With a chest cold, a passable baritone.) But Bradley Delp sang on a completely different plane.

Yum!

2007-02-15T02:49:00.001-05:00

New ice cream named for Stephen Colbert

I'm not a Colbert fan, since I don't watch much TV. And I'm not going to get into the liberal bias of the media here. But vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel?

Yum.

And hey - they could have included three kinds of nuts, but didn't. So props to that.

Ok, look. I'm over 40. Vanilla IS a flavor.

Yum!

2007-02-15T02:49:00.000-05:00

Gar - this is just getting SO tedious...

2007-02-14T02:00:00.000-05:00

The MS Sslams our soldiers. again. I don't want to spend much to much time on this, but, dangit, it's going to get MSM play despite the fact that it warrants zero attention. The article claims that the military is lowering its standards, wasting no time to get in an editorial jab.

"The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties. "

Emphasis added. I'll let you read the article and see for yourself how slanted it is, but here's a sample:

"The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003."

More than double? Double what? Compared to what? Can we have some real numbers, please? In statgeekspeak, "What's the n"? In MSMspeak, "What's the data, Kenneth"?

Ah, but.

Read down TEN paragraphs to see who instigated this kerfuffle. It's Aaron Belkin, director of the Michael D. Palm center, which Google reveals as a "think tank" apparently dedicated to opposing the (Clinton-era) "don't-ask-don't-tell" US military policy on in-the-ranks homosexuality.

I guess that it's a Bad Thing to let kids who've had a brush with the law volunteer to risk getting their butts blown off, while at the same time...

Nope. Not gonna say it.

Wouldn't be prudent.

A day late and a dollar short, as usual

2007-02-10T00:29:00.000-05:00

Click the link above and listen.

Oh-ay. Did that?
Good. Now, I know, it's Far Too Late (i.e., > 30 seconds) for me to have any effect on that particular conversation, but...

I LIKE Barney, hokay? Barney is Nice (as opposed to Niiice). You grok the difference, eh?
I learned some really useful stuff from a wannabe ethnomusicologist. So I got no gripes on dem, yaknow? Hokay.
I put a World Music course online, an' it seems t'be doing reasonably well.
Zither an'bone flute, hit can work, maann...

But.

Still.

Sometimes music needs to be used as a weapon of mass irritation.

Ask me about Pete and the laundry, hokay?

Da Game... eh, well, da Halftime Show, eh?

2007-02-05T00:37:00.000-05:00

SERIOUS PROPS to the behind-the-scenes folks who made it possible for The Nameless One to play LIVE in pouring rain!!
His unspoken yet obviously heartfelt tribute to Dylan and Jimi... Well done.

Next year, and every year until 2010, some fifty-odd Sociology 202 students will write about how at SB41 a black guitarist paid musical tribute to an amazing black guitarist at the halftime show where for the first time two black head coaches squared off...

And in another thirty years kids will come across that and think, "Huh? What's the deal with skin color?"

And in 2047 someone will actually get a Ph.D. based on whether Prince did or did not play a Chuck Berry lick in his halftime show.

The cost of lessons

2007-01-30T11:58:00.000-05:00

Hrmphf.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I thoroughly disagree with folks on the left who want America to lose in Iraq so that we will "learn a lesson."

On the other hand, I agree that the spineless, feckless, craven Senators who put their personal political fortunes above victory need to be taught a lesson.

It seems a bit... inconsistent, non?. But is there a difference?

Yes. It has to do with intentions, consequences and outcomes. If several Senators come up short in their fundraising and therefore lose their races in '08, they will probably lose to pro-victory GOP primary opponents. Depending on whether the electorate at large wants victory, the general election will go to either a pro-victory or pro-retreat candidate. If the electorate wants retreat, then the incumbents will defeat their pro-victory primary opponents anyway.

If, however, these Senators notice The Pledge and grow some backbone, then victory is more likely (though not assured, given the pro-defeat media).

The Pledge signers don't want these Senators to lose per se, we want them to support victory. That's the lesson we want them to learn, and soon.

The "lesson" that the Left wants America to learn requires that we first be defeated and humiliated. In the process, the Middle East will become exponentially more unstable, with a failed-state Iraq becoming a training ground for Iranian-backed terrorists, likely war between Turkey and a new Kurdistan (putting NATO in quite a conundrum), and the Saudis and Israelis perhaps being forced to engage Iran militarily.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions will die.

Persian Gulf oil production and transport will plummet, sending prices skyrocketing and ushering in a worldwide economic crisis.

But the Left doesn't care about any of those things so long as the US "learns a lesson."