Incentives and The Prize

I'd like to know what economic lessons Tim Harford would find behind Mark Zuckerberg, Cory Booker, and Chris Christie's attempt to transform the Newark school system; Zuckerberg donated 100 million dollars, Cory Booker-- a passionate proponent of charter schools-- raised sums to match this money, and Chris Christie saw this as an opportunity to attack the unions; Dale Russakoff explains all this and more in her book The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools? and the morals of the story are complex, ugly, ambiguous, messy, and occasionally inspirational:

1) there is no magic bullet to fix education in an impoverished city;

2) top down directives, even if they use excellent jargon, don't change broken infrastructure;

3) you can't move kids around willy-nilly in a city like Newark to fill charter schools-- because the kids left behind have no where to learn, and the kids who get moved may have issues with with where they are moved-- gang turf, lack of busing, etcetera;

4) if you don't consult the community before implementing giant initiatives that involve their kids, they will feel angry and oppressed, especially if these directives are ordered by a white superintendent in a primarily black city;

5) you can be a rock-star or a mayor, but you can't be a rock-star mayor;

6) it's difficult to measure what parents and administrators find important in education, so the bureaucracy tends to find important what is easy to measure-- which is usually test scores-- and this can bite you in the ass;

7) consultants know how to bill hours and make a shitload of money from a situation like this (and it seems Zuckerberg has learned this lesson and is trying a different approach in the San Francisco bay area);

8) kids in a city like Newark need all kinds of additional support besides teaching, many of them have experienced horrible tragedy and violence, and they need counseling and psychological support as much as they need reading and math review;

9) Newark's billion dollar education budget is the "prize" sought after by politicians, unions, government and citizens . . . and there is going to be greed and corruption surrounding this much money;

10) there are superb teachers and students in the current system, and smart parents shepherd their kids through, but it's difficult to get rid of poor teachers because of union rules;

11) politicians and philanthropists will eventually lose interest and move on with their lives, but the parents and the kids and the community remains-- so change has to come from the bottom-up, and it needs to come from people that are going to stay in the community-- Booker went on to a senate position, Christie had to deal with Bridgegate and his presidential campaign, and Zuckerberg moved on to a new project-- meanwhile, the two hundred million dollar donation was a drop in the bucket, and got eaten up by consultants, contract negotiations with the union, and some charter schools-- but the main infrastructure in Newark is still ancient and crumbling, teachers still go to work in that environment, and students attempt to learn there . . . and the work needs to be done one student and one teacher and one classroom and one school building at a time, which is far more boring than radical, transformational top-down change;

12) if you want to understand some of the complexities of educational reform, read this book.

Life isn't Fair (but Sometimes It Is Logical)

Tim Harford's The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World is another gem, especially if you're a fan of Freakonomics style logic; he examines how incentives often do the reverse of what is intended-- the existence of nicotine patches encourage teens to smoke, too many women in big cities discourage marriage, mild preferences create neighborhoods that would suggest virulent racism, it's more beneficial to research the kind of coffee maker or car you're going to buy than the next presidential candidate, your boss is probably an overpaid dope who doesn't know how hard you work (and that makes perfect sense) and the best way to solve overpopulation might be to move to the city and have six kids . . . I don't have the time or energy to explain the logic behind all these conclusions, but the book is smart and worth a read, though I must warn you, it starts in a rather salaciously concupiscent manner (reminiscent of Superfreakonomics).

This Is Difficult to Articulate

I feel like on some level, in some space in my brain, I am very, very smart . . . but I just can't remember things, or think of examples when I need them, or put things into words very well . . . does everyone else feel like this too?

The Test 41: Zombies (and Zombeavers)

This week on The Test, Stacey collaborates with special guest Liz collaborates on a phenomenal and comprehensive zombie quiz-- Dave and Cunningham struggle (despite Cunningham's rather ambitious prediction that she will receive an A+) but learn that they know more about zombies than they thought; this is a great test for both newbs and aficionados, and, not only that, Stacey gets her comeuppance from the Voice of God (probably because of her frequent use of profanity) so give this one a shot and see how you fare.

I Can't Get the Slime into the Tube

I was very excited to use the bottle of Slime Tube Sealant that I purchased, as Slime Tube Sealant prevents and repairs flat tires, seals instantly and uses non-toxic fibro-seal technology, which is exactly what I needed to fix the slow leak in the back tire of my mountain bike, but, despite repeated efforts with various tools (including a pair of needle-nosed pliers and the top of the Slime Tube Sealant bottle, which claims to be a device for exactly this purpose) I couldn't get past instruction #2, even with help from a Youtube video-- and if you can't remove the valve core from the Schrader air valve, then you can't get the Slime Tube Sealant into the tire tube . . . so it's back to the bike shop for me-- I'm sure they've got a tool for this sort of thing, and I'm sure I'll feel like an idiot when I explain that I couldn't remove the Schrader valve core from my bike's back tire (even with the included tool) and that I couldn't motivate myself to remove the back tire of my bike and prize the tire off the rim and switch the tube myself, because I'm lazy and get no satisfaction from working with my hands because I'm an effete useless bastard who just wants to ride his bike but doesn't wanted to do any of the maintenance associated with riding said bike.

They Skipped This One in Driver's Ed

Obviously drunk-driving and texting-while-driving are bad news, but neither of these is as dangerous as driving with a large hairy black spider on your leg (and the worst thing about this incident is that in my attempt to kill this spider, I endangered my own life and the well-being of everyone in the vicinity of my car, but I didn't actually squash it-- I was travelling forty-five miles an hour--,and it scurried under the floor mat, whereabouts unknown, lurking, waiting for another chance to clamber up my leg and cause more mayhem on the highway).

Reverse Allusion

The weather has warmed up, and this has inspired me to continue my project of grabbing large rocks from the river during low tide, putting them in my backpack, and then carrying them up the hill to my backyard, where I use the stones for decorative mulch and ivy barriers . . . my friend Stacey calls this maneuver The Reverse Shawshank.

'tis the Season to Be Cranky

It is once again time for my semi-annual Daylight Saving Time Rant, but this year I'm happy to report that I've found one kindred soul who empathizes with my pain and suffering-- my friend Ann; her husband takes the same stance as my wife about Daylight Saving Time: it's only and hour, stop complaining . . . but Ann is of my mind, she feels the same anger at this pointless top-down bureaucratic time shift, and suffers the same anxiety and discomfort from the lost hour, which won't be found for six months-- and by then, I'll have adjusted, and it will screw me up all over again, and I don't know why we can't move the time 30 minutes ahead and leave it forever, or do a Daylight Saving Month and move the clocks two minutes a day, so no one is inconvenienced (we have computers) and while everyone agreed it would be bad news if Ann and I were married, as the dynamic combination of our indignance, suffering, criticizing, complaining, and general disgust would create a whirling black hole of negativity that would suck up everyone within twenty miles of the nexus, I think that it is good that we provide some yin in the yang of our respective marriages . . . nothing is more boring than two positive, practical, efficient, and focused yangs . . . so this Daylight Saving Time, let's celebrate the darkness, the yin, and those people who are willing to speak and complain and criticize and whine about this antiquated, absurd, and ultimately pointless practice.

Musical Theater as Punishment

My son Ian got in some serious trouble Friday night and his consequence for his various infractions is a two week grounding; for the first night of his punishment, I forced him to attend the school play: a musical version of Little Women . . .  I didn't really want to go (because I hate musical theater) but I had several students in the show and the added incentive that I could torture my son was enough motivation for me to spend my Saturday night with a bunch of teenagers and their parents in a high school auditorium-- and though we both didn't care much for the plot-- girl stuff-- Ian and I did both concede that the actors were really talented . . . and the next time Ian screws up I'm taking him to the opera.

The Test 40: More Theme Songs

This week on The Test, Cunningham administers another TV (and a movie!) Theme Song Quiz; Stacey and I do better than the first time around (but that's not saying much) and I am chastised by the Voice of God for making stuff up; as a bonus, in order to educate young Cunningham, Stacey sings the theme song from an ancient TV sitcom (and I join in).

 

Pleasant Rhyming Surprise

I was walking the dog Friday afternoon and a middle school girl nearly ran into me-- she was looking down intently at an object in her hands-- and I assumed she was staring at her cell-phone, and my brain started on its normal path-- cursing technology and its death grip on the youth-- but then I noticed she wasn't looking into a tiny screen, she was thoughtfully perusing a perfectly formed pine cone, and this made me very happy.

Something to Teach Your Kids: Money Talks and Bullshit Walks

While my parental proclamation declaring that my children may only watch approved and highly rated documentaries on school nights has predictably fallen by the wayside, I was able to resurrect a bastardized version of the decree on Wednesday night; instead of allowing my kids to continue their obsessive viewing of Family Guy on Netflix, I forced them to watch Spinal Tap . . . and while they didn't laugh as hard as I did, they admitted that they enjoyed the film, especially when Derek Smalls gets stuck inside the pod and when Nigel Tufnel reunites the band for a reunion tour in Japan . . . the next movie I'm forcing my kids to watch: The Breakfast Club.

Pizza Ambitions

The Freakonomics episode "The Cheeseburger Diet" has inspired me to eat pizza from a wider variety of establishments, and while I'm not as ambitious as Emily O'Mara, i.e. I haven't created a rubric to judge the pizza I eat, I do have a couple of recommendations: oddly, Shanahan's Bakery (in Milltown) makes fantastic pizza-- thin and delicious crust, sweet sauce, and just the right amount of cheese . . . and they also have lots of specialty slices; Brothers Pizza (in East Brunswick) was highly recommended by the locals, and I really liked their square cut "Grandma Style"-- which reminded me of Rhode Island pizza (no cheese) but I didn't really care for the mushroom slice-- canned mushrooms, doughy crust, and too much cheese . . . and while both of these places can certainly compete with my two mainstays, Mancini's-- which is in East Brunswick-- and Attilio's in Edison, I've yet to find pizza as good as the thin crust pie at Pete and Elda's in Neptune.

Expatriates

I remember when we first went to live and teach overseas, an older international teacher told me, "Don't expect anyone back at home to care or understand what it's like to leave the United States and live in a foreign place . . . when you go home for the summer, they're just going to tell you how many rolls of toilet paper they bought at Costco," and while I found this to be a bit of an exaggeration (while my family wasn't particularly curious about our life in Syria, my friends and colleagues were generally interested in my stories, anecdotes, and analysis . ..  or maybe they just pretended) and while I thought I had forgotten much of day-to-day life overseas was like, Janice Y. K. Lee's novel The Expatriates brought it all back for me; it's the story of three expatriate women in Hong Kong, and while it's definitely chick-lit and examines the inner lives of these women in detail-- and makes some statements about the inner lives of women in general-- it is also a story of the fishbowl world of the expatriate community and how that world operates . . . there is the sentiment while you are there, far from home, that the people you are with are (and will be) the most significant people in your life-- and Lee takes a sardonic look at that struggle to fit into this new community, how difficult that is for adults, but there is also the realization that "no one back home cares . . . there's an initial shallow interest in what life is like abroad, but most Americans aren't actually interested at all," and not only did the novel detail and articulate that theme, which is near and dear to me, but there's also Mercy Cho-- the Korean-American Columbia graduate who is so ironically American that she sees the "meta" in everything, despite the tragedy that surrounds her, she remains detached; you don't have to have been an expatriate to enjoy this rather intense (but also humorous) novel, but it certainly helps.

The Arbitrary Nature of Basketball Design

99% Invisible is a fairly nerdy podcast which focuses on design, but "The Yin and Yang of Basketball" is a refreshing change from the norm; it features a short history of basketball, and how James Naismith's arbitrary decision to place the basket ten feet off the ground privileged tall folks, which inevitably led the game down a ploddingly boring path, where big men banged around near the paint in order to get as close to the rim as possible, but as interest waned (in the 1970s) the ABA introduced the three-point shot, which spread the game out and led to the current state of affairs: Stephen Curry has broken his own three-point record with twenty-percent of the season left to play, if he continues on this pace he'll outstrip his old total by an incredible amount . . . most sporting records are never broken by more than ten percent (and usually much less) but this indicates a sea change in professional basketball-- for more on this, check out "Stephen Curry is the Revolution" at FiveThirtyEight.

Happy Birthday?

On the morning of my birthday, my mother texted me this:

Hi Dave, Happy 46th birthday . . . have a good day . . . I can't believe in four years, you will be 50, I will be 75, hopefully, and Alex will be driving on his permit . . .

and I feel like the tone of this text is a breach of birthday etiquette, as not only is there a reference to my mother's mortality-- and she's perfectly healthy-- but the text also thrusts me four years closer to my own hypothetical demise, for no apparent reason-- and four years is a long time: longer than my wife and I spent in Syria, the same amount of time it takes most people to get a degree, and so I wanted to text back (but didn't) a message in this vein: "That's true, and in fifty-four years, the bulk of the East Coast will be underwater and we'll both certainly be dead."

The Test 39: Chronological Fun for the Whole Family

Once upon a time, I had a great idea for a Trivial Pursuit style family board game-- you would receive three thematically connected things, and you would have to put them in chronological order (for example: The Great Wall of China, The Taj Mahal, The Mesa Verde Anasazi Cliff Dwellings) and while I gave up on this concept as fun for the whole family, it did make for a pretty good test . . . so check out this week's episode, see if you can compete with Stacey and our two special guests (MJ and Terry) and try not to get involved in our rift with Billy Joel.

More Undercover Economics

I highly recommend Tim Harford's book The Undercover Economist-- here are a few of the many many topics he covers:

1) why storebrand supermarket products are packaged with the "purpose of conveying awful quality" though they are often indistinguishable from actual braids . . . it wouldn't cost much to improve the logos of these products, but that would defeat the purpose, the packaging is designed to put off customers who might be willing to pay more . . . IBM did this with their LaserWriter E low end printer, which was the same machine as their high end LaserWriter, only with an additional chip to slow it down-- it was cheaper to manufacture it like this than make an actual slower printer for less-- and the same goes for "professional" and mass-market versions of software programs . . . the professional is built first and then the cheaper one is handicapped;

2) the externalities of traffic jams . . . the best solution might be a per trip tax, especially during rush hour in congested areas;

3) the economic reasons U.S. health care is "hugely expensive, very bureaucratic, and extremely patchy" and the ways we can combat this, using inside information, catastrophe insurance, and cooperation between the government and markets;

4) why poor countries are poor, and why tariffs and "bringing jobs" back isn't the answer-- this section gets quite technical, but mainly what I got out of it is that poor countries try to protect industries that can't compete in the global market instead of doing what they do best, and this often leads to subsidies and corruption which drain from the economy and only help special interest groups-- in other words, the best way to make really good cars in the US is a technology called "Japan," and we should grow a shitload of corn and export it so we can turn that foreign currency into great cars, instead of trying to make our own . . . this in controversial, of course, and people get laid off and fired and have to be retrained along the way . . . but that's what wealthier countries do, time after time (and I have read that no country has become poorer after opening its borders, though I have also read that you may need the government to help you establish the infrastructure to compete on an global level, and then you can kick out the ladder . . . economists never agree on anything).

Triple Threat

I may not be a great cook, and I'm certainly not a great singer, and (compared to my friends) I'm not the world's best beer drinker . . . but combine the three of them into one event and I think I'm right up there, one of the best there is at beer-drinking and singing while I'm cooking (especially if I'm listening to Sheryl Crowe).

You Be the Judge

So "face-swapping" apps are all the rage right now at our school, and the "face-swap" above is a combination of me and my colleague and podcasting partner Stacey; it's my face on her head, with her hair of course-- and the general consensus is that my face and Stacey's hair make for a spitting image of Brad Pitt . . . of course, there are a few doubters out there-- including my wife-- but I think those in doubt are just jealous and don't want to admit that if I had some luscious brown hair and a slightly longer face, I'd be a super-famous movie-star desired by most of the women on the planet . . . anyway, I'm growing my hair out, so in three or four years, we'll see just how accurate the face-swapping is.

Dave and Theodore Geisel Both Enjoy Another Birthday (to Varying Degrees)

The doctor and I
are both a year older,
but his celebration
is darker and colder.

An Open Letter to the Lady Who Yelled "FULL STOP!" at Me

Dear Old Lady with Two Little White Dogs Who Yelled "FULL STOP!!!" at me,

while I will readily admit that I did not come to a full stop at the STOP sign before I inched my car out at the intersection to make a left turn, I'd also like to point out that in the town of Highland Park, which has narrow streets and many cars parked on the sides of these streets, coming to a full stop at a STOP sign is useless, as you can't see anything until you inch your way forward and look beyond the parked cars on either side of the intersection-- and while I was inching out, at an approximate speed of ten miles per hour, I heard someone screaming . . . it was you, waving your arms, screaming "FULL STOP!" at me and I'd like to point out to you that this distracted me from my task of getting out into the intersection, because instead of looking for oncoming cars and pedestrians and bikers and skateboarders, instead of watching for these hazards, I was looking at you, a wildly gesticulating gray-haired lady with two white dogs, shrieking "FULL STOP!" at me and this nearly made me forget my mission, which is never hit a dog or a child with my vehicle, a mission I am proud to say that I am vigilantly pursuing each and every day of my life, despite your attempts to subvert my attention, and while I realize that you mean well, I hope this sentence finds its way to you and you recognize the irony and insanity of your actions.

Inflation Subverts Sticky Prices

The Planet Money podcast recommended everything written by Tim Harford, and I love Planet Money, so I went to the library and took out The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run-- or Ruin-- an Economy and the guys at Planet Money were right; this is a highly entertaining look at macroeconomics and some of the problems and solutions to keeping an economy chugging along . . . most of ideas are a bit counterintuitive . . . the best time to trim spending, pay off debt and deregulate is during a boom-- and while most countries do these things during a recession, the best thing to do during a recession is dust off huge government projects and allow the government to employ lots of people and create value and worth . . . but again, these are the things that usually happen during a booming economy; I also learned that inflation is the only way to defeat sticky prices and sticky wages-- it's really hard to cut people's pay and to mark down the value of goods and services once a  fair price is established, but if you have a bit of inflation every year, then you can still give people raises, they are just less than the rate of inflation, so-- in effect-- they are taking a pay cut, and this works the same way with devaluing a house or something that is difficult to part with for less money than you paid for it (even if it's truly worth less money-- countries with higher home ownership also have higher unemployment, because it's harder to move where the jobs are because housing markets are slow and sticky and efficient); Harford ends the book addressing inequality of income and what that really means around the world, within countries and between them, and he believes the course of action to understanding large-scale economics is that the models need to incorporate more on human behavior, because we don't behave like perfectly rational future prediction machines, we are at the whims of our "animal spirits" and when these exacerbate an economy on a large scale, it's extremely hard to predict what is going to happen.

The Test 38: One for the Sporting Fanatics

In honor of Stephen Curry's magical performance last night,  I humbly present the newest episode of The Test, which is dedicated to the wonderful pastime which is sports; while Stacey designed this quiz to torture Cunningham-- which it did-- the questions had the opposite effect on me, and made me wax profoundly on the value and significance of all things athletic . . . so give it a shot, see if you can beat me, see if anyone is funnier than Cunningham, and try not to get choked up when Stacey does her send-up up of The Locker Room Speech.

One for the Birders

After some internet research, I realized that I misspoke: the hawk that perched in the maple in our backyard yesterday was a red-shouldered hawk, not a red-tailed hawk . . . sometimes I'm such an idiot.

This Can't Be the Answer . . . Could It?

I'm going to give it a try-- and I've gotten endorsements from many knowledgeable people-- but I can't believe that the cure for my aching knee is a single velcro band (otherwise known as a Jumper's Knee Strap).

Dave Pitches a Great Idea for a TV Show

So here it is, my pitch for The Super Bachelor of Dave . . . instead of the typical fluff on the current show, the contestants will undergo a sequence of events detailed below-- so that the bachelor can estimate the genetic robustness of all the candidates and make an educated choice on who he wants to bear his young; each week the bachelor will give one or more of his 23 chromosomes to the ladies he wants to stay, and he'll give a prophylactic to those he wants a to go . . . indicating that he would not want to procreate with them (but does not dismiss them from a purely sexual tryst . . . no hard feelings) and I think this format could work for a bachelorette as well, and might even be more important . . . here are some possibilities for events:

1) a soccer match, of course-- there's no faster way to check out how athletic someone is than to watch them play soccer . . . teamwork, speed, spatial skills, and strategic inclinations are  all immediately apparent;

2) pick-up basketball . . . same as above;

3) tennis tournament . . . not as indicative as basketball and soccer, but I love those outfits;

4) a standardized test . . . SAT, ACT, whatever;

5) orienteering . . . it's nice to marry someone with a good sense of direction;

6) driving test . . . you don't want to be cringing when you're in the passenger seat;

7) flu exposure . . . this episode will be ugly, with lots of vomiting, fever, defecation and shivering, but you want a spouse with a hardy immune system and this is the only way to tell;

8) squats . . . curls are for the girls and bench isn't all that important, but it's good to know someone can put up some weight and has sturdy thighs and quads;

9) chili cook-off;

10) a financial assessment . . . you don't want to marry anyone carrying a huge credit card debt or with an outstanding lien on their property . . . and if they have money in the family, that's a big plus, even if they can't put up big numbers on the squat rack.

Now You Know

Apparently, not everyone on earth knows that the easiest way to remove a piece of eggshell that has fallen into your egg is to use the empty half of the cracked eggshell as a scooper-- the jagged edge pierces the egg membrane and the bit of shell is magically attracted to the large scooper-shell . . . I don't know who taught me this (probably the same person who taught me to detach my windshield wipers from my windshield and let them stick straight up the night before a snowstorm) but I've run into a surprising number of people who have never heard of this extremely effective technique . . . and this makes me wonder about all the amazing stuff that no one bothered to explain to me.

It Must Be February

My wife and kids are sick, and my knees are shot from playing basketball and indoor soccer.

Agent to the Stars

I needed a break from literature about the American Southwest (on deck . . . Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire) so I read John Scalzi's sci-fi novel Agent to the Stars; the plot sounds absurd-- aesthetically unappealing, smelly (but friendly) aliens travel across the universe to investigate and embrace the intelligent life on earth, but then drag their feet about first contact, because they've seen all of our movies and television and know how we generally treat gross alien creatures . . . so they seek representation and leave it to a Hollywood agent to figure out how to best introduce them to the planet-- but the novel is more serious than you might imagine from the synopsis . . . the characters are well drawn, the insight into the Hollywood agency is vivid and meticulous, the writing is sharp, and the plot really moves . . . the book is more than a satire of sci-fi and the film industry (although it is that as well) and dog-lovers, film-lovers and dog-film lovers will especially appreciate the story.

The Test 37: Black (and White) History

This week on The Test,  I administer a series of questions inspired by Black History Month and, I must admit that the ladies perform admirably-- in fact, they are deemed "not racist"-- but then, in order to be fair, I ask them a multi-part question about white people (that requires me to do several impersonations) and they do NOT perform admirably on this section . . . the questions might be more geared to folks of my generation . . . anyway, give this one a shot, and see if you are more racist, less racist, or exactly the same amount of racist as the gang.

If You Pee on a Tree in the Forest, and No One Sees You . . .

After some very poor scientific research in the English Office-- mainly based on anecdotal evidence, with occasional specious references to "studies" and "articles"-- we determined two things about asparagus consumption: 

1) when some people eat asparagus, their pee smells weird;

2) when other people eat asparagus, their pee does NOT smell weird;

and Stacey and I were proud of the "fact" that our pee did not smell weird after eating asparagus, but after a bit of reading I learned that our research and consequent hypotheses were patently stupid-- what did you expect from a bunch of English teachers?-- and the fact of the matter is that everyone's pee contains asparagusic acid after asparagus is eaten, but not everyone can smell the substance; some people have a specific smell-blindness (scientifically known as a specific anosmia) to the asparagus-pee-smell . . . which leads to a philosophical question: if asparagus pee falls into a toilet, and you can't smell it, does it smell like asparagus?

That Was Close

It's a good thing the sun came out yesterday, because one more day of cloudy weather and my bones would have turned to jelly (and my brain too, I was having trouble staying awake, I couldn't think straight, and all I wanted to do was eat chocolate and drink coffee . . . I don't know how people in the Pacific Northwest accomplish anything).

In Twenty Years, I'll Get to Say "I Told You So"

I tried to articulate my feelings on smartphones over on Gheorghe:The Blog, but the short and sweet versions is this:

1) I hate them;

2) I've completely banned them in my class and told my students I'm treating them like cigarettes, if I lay eyes on a smartphone, I'm confiscating it;

3) my school has embraced them, and now has a BYOD policy . . . Bring Your Own Device . . . which means students can use them in the hallways and at lunch, and can utilize them in class if the teacher allows it;

4) I think BYOD is lunacy, as do many other teachers, because it's hard enough to focus on chemistry without having a gaming system, social-networking conduit, camera, audio recorder, app center, and general panacea for all boredom in your immediate possession;

5) there's plenty of research citing the fact that test scores go up (6 percent on average and double that for lower achieving students) when smartphones are banned . . . and that writing notes down on paper is a powerful cognitive tool that aids in processing ideas and higher level thinking;

6) I believe people in the future will view our obsession with smartphones and their ubiquity with the same nostalgic horror that we view the "good old days" when people could smoke cigarettes on airplanes . . . and I believe that there are similarities between cigarettes and smartphones-- they are both portable addictive dopamine dispensers-- and folks in the future will laugh and laugh when they read descriptions of how we sent our youngsters to school and out driving (in human controlled cars!) with these incredibly distracting devices; they will view this period as a bout of temporary insanity, akin to when you could light up your cigarette or cigar any damn place you pleased.

Weird and Weirder

If you're not looking for a big commitment and you need something to stream on Netflix and you're in the mood for something kind of weird, then try Episode 7 of Black Mirror-- it's called "White Christmas" and it stars Jon Hamm; Black Mirror is a British update of The Twilight Zone . . . but the episodes center around the perils of technological innovation, and "White Christmas" is really fun and strange and features lots of surprises and a plot that circles right around to the beginning and makes perfect sense . . . if you're still in the mood for something short and self-contained and weird, watch Punch Drunk Love, it was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Adam Sandler, and features a cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman . . . I always had fond memories of this movie, but hadn't watched it since 2002, when it came out-- it holds up really well, and is even more bizarre than I remembered.

A Great Novel (with a not so great title)

The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols, is quite a novel . . . it details a water-rights squabble in New Mexico, between the poor chicanos and the wealthy developers, and it is full of salt-of-the-earth characters, mock-epic hilarity, beautiful descriptions of the mountains and high desert plains, special agents, magical realism, guns, an incorrigible pig, local politics and astute social commentary . . . and it's got a page-turning plot to boot . . . the tone occasionally reminds me of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and while I admit Marquez came up with a much better title, you should really give The Milagro Beanfield War a try . . . I'm trying to read a shitload of books about the American Southwest in preparation for our family road trip this summer, and this one has given me an unusual and memorable perspective on northern New Mexico.

You Can't Undo a First Impression

When I receive a new class of students, I generally try to make a good first impression; I try to come across as fun and easygoing, but remind the students that my class will be challenging and I will reward diligence; unfortunately, this doesn't always happen . . . for a fantastically awkward pair of back-to-back examples of my worst start to a class ever, read this . . . and something similar happened two weeks ago; I had bronchitis and I missed two day of school . . . including the first day of my new Creative Writing class, so, as sub work, I gave them a fairly long New Yorker article about brainstorming to read: it's a fantastic article,  and while the first few paragraphs explain some of the history behind traditional brainstorming and how much everyone loves it, the thrust of the essay is that brainstorming doesn't work at all, and in fact, is worse than working alone; there's been a battery of psychological tests, and the research indicates that people produce the best ideas when there is healthy debate and criticism, and not a system that embraces blind acceptance of any idea at all . . . but I wasn't in school and so my students-- who had never met me and didn't know that if I give you something to read, you'd better read it-- perfunctorily read a few paragraphs of the article and then wrote a bunch of unfounded BS about how much everyone loves brainstorming, and so when I returned to school on Friday, still ailing and weak, but in school because it was a delayed opening because of snow and I didn't want to waste a sick day on a truncated schedule, and I read the pile of papers that got the thesis of the article completely wrong, I got very indignant, and-- because of the wackiness of the schedule-- I didn't have lunch at the proper time, so I brought a steaming bowl of soup to class, told the kids that they did a terrible job with the article and I was really angry because they made me read a pile of unfounded BS, gave them the article again, commanded them to reread it and do the assignment again and to type it up over the weekend and then explained to them that they had made a horrible first impression on me, and then, while they silently read the article, I slurped my soup and glowered at them . . . occasionally I stopped slurping my soup and enjoyed a phlegmy cough, and then I went back to slurping, while they read in silence . . . it was a really awkward first impression, and while we've reconciled since then (aside from the one girl who dropped the class . . . she probably thought she was dealing with a lunatic) I don't think they'll ever quite forget it or get over it.

Dave's Scarf-Technique Atrophies Due to Warm Winter

It's been a relatively mild winter, and so I haven't had much practice with my scarf-technique . . . I had it mastered last winter, but my skills have atrophied (and I forgot that I need to wear a hooded sweatshirt in order to make a scarf operate flawlessly) and it was very very cold and windy last night, but my parents took the kids overnight, so Catherine and I-- in honor of Valentine's Day-- decided to make a go of it and walk across the bridge into New Brunswick to eat at the delicious Ethiopian place (Desta) but my scarf was hanging low and my cheeks got so cold that I almost puked and I tried to convince her to turn back when we were halfway over the bridge, but she pressed on and I glumly followed . . .  we finally made it to the restaurant, warmed up, drank our ice cold beer from the cooler-- ice cold beer that felt warm to our frozen hands-- and had a delicious meal, and then I really piled my scarf high for the walk home, and while this protected my face, I learned another lesson: you can't wear glasses when you have a scarf piled high on your face or they steam up and freeze, so you can't see where you're going (which admittedly, is better than getting frostbite, but still not a pleasant way to walk around in the bitter cold).

The Test 36: TV Themes and Beatboxing

The gang reunites this week on The Test for Cunningham's perpetually astounding, perplexingly astounding TV Theme Song quiz (I've been channelling Walt "Clyde" Frazier lately) and-- warning-- Stacey and I have some serious cognitive difficulties with this one . . . Stacey gets philosophical about her malfunctioning brain and says something very poetic: "I can't even remember my memories," and I get frustrated and angry and claim I have Alzheimer's, and then I attribute my intellectual failures to the fact that it was Friday afternoon after a long week of teaching, which is ridiculous . . . anyway, we finish strong, with an amazing display of vocal prestidigitation; so take a shot, keep score, see how you do, and don't be stingy with the points . . . also, if you like it, give us a rating on iTunes and/or Stitcher . . . thanks!
 

You Can Clip Your Nails, and You Can Clip a Receiver, But Can You Clip a Receiver's Nails?

In the winter, when I clip my fingernails, even if I'm doing it over the sink or the toilet, the nail clippings fly all over the place and there's no finding/retrieving them . . . I think it's because my nails are less pliable in the winter (because of the cold weather) and while I still pretend I care about where the nail fragments are going-- and I still do the clipping over the toilet or the sink, I have to be candid and admit that literally zero percent of the nail clippings end up where I want them . . . so should I stop pretending and just clip my nails while I walk around the house, letting them fly willy-nilly where the dog might eat them, or should I keep up this faux-hygienic charade?

Perks of my Job

Teaching is fairly predictable: once you've taught a topic a few times, you know what questions the kids will ask and you know what issues will raise interesting discussions, but there are occasional super-excellent unpredictable moments along the way (such as this one) that are spontaneous and priceless, and something in that vein happened yesterday afternoon; I was giving the kids some background on Shakespeare, as we were about to begin Hamlet and I told them: "Chaucer was before Shakespeare, he wrote the Canterbury Tales in the late 1300's and he wrote them in Middle English-- which is really hard to read . . . but Shakespeare wrote in a more modern kind of English, which is much easier to read, it was named after the ruler of the time . . . anyone know what kind of English it was called, Shakespeare's English?" and a lovely girl-- an intelligent girl, I should add, so you don't get the wrong impression from this one particular response, a response given late in the day in the midst of a dark and snowy February afternoon, while I was lecturing about iambic pentameter and the Globe Theatre -- anyway, this wonderful girl sitting in the front left gamely took a shot at my question about the kind of English spoken during Shakespeare's time, a kind of English named after the ruler of the time; she said, "Metric English?" and her answer didn't really register in my brain, and I said, "No . . . Elizabethan English" and then there was a beat, and then the entire class realized why she said "Metric English" and we all laughed and laughed (even though the official adoption of meter sticks in the UK wasn't until far after Shakespeare's death).

Dreams Deferred, Destroyed, Depressed, Disintegrated, and Damaged

The boys and I just finished watching the epic documentary Hoop Dreams-- it streams on Netflix-- and if you haven't seen it, it's something you have to watch . . . but beware: the film keeps it very real, and the various dreams of the characters in the film are often deferred or shattered . . . and if you're a real glutton for punishment, check out where the main figures in the story are now . . . there are a few bright spots, but also plenty of tragedy; if you're still in the mood for even more depressingly frank anti-dream reality after watching Hoop Dreams, then go see The Big Short-- it has a documentary feel, and documentary-like moments, though it's not documentary, and Christian Bale and Steve Carell do a fantastic job playing real people (Michael Burry and Mark Bain) . . . but be prepared to confront the destruction of the American Dream (and you're also going to need to prepare a bit so you understand the vocabulary and the main concepts, you could either read a bunch of books and watch an actual documentary, or you could read my sentences about them . . . here are my suggestions: The Big Short, House of Cards, The Black Swan, After the Music Stops, Unintended Consequences, Griftopia and Inside Job).

Your Dog is Your Best Friend, But That Doesn't Make Him Smart

My dog thinks motorcycles are a species of wild animal that require barking and chasing (he also feels the same way about garbage trucks . . . it must be the low rumble of the engine . . . and I often wonder how he perceives these things; in his consciousness, the garbage truck must resemble a woolly mammoth and the motorcycle an elk or moose . . . and while this poses an imminent and obvious danger to him, it must be exciting to live in a world where those kinds of beasts still roam).

Philosophy and Dog Jokes

At this point in my life, I am resigned to the fact that I am a dilettante; I move from one thing to another, get very excited about it, make some progress, and then switch-- and while this methodology has it's obvious flaws, it's always exciting when the middle of the semester rolls around and I start teaching Philosophy Class again . . . I am seriously under-qualified to teach this course, and once it's over I generally forget that it's even on my schedule, but when it starts I'm always a ball of fire; this year, to prepare, I've been listening to a very informative (albeit nerdy) podcast called Philosophize This! and I'm reading a book called The Physicist & The Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time . . . and I'm going to be candid here, because Socrates taught us that the first step to wisdom is realizing that you are not very wise and that you know far less than you think: before I read this book, I had no idea who Henri Bergson was-- his story arc is similar to Humboldt's, in that he was extraordinarily famous in his time, and then fell out of favor-- and I had no idea that Bergson and Einstein had an "explosive debate" that "transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between science and the humanities that persists today," but now I'm starting to understand this, and I even read a Bergson excerpt from his essay "Laughter: An Essay on the meaning of Comic" . . . which got me thinking philosophically: do any animals ever laugh or make jokes or find things funny?

The Test 35: Stacey's Songs #4

This week on The Test, Stacey confounds special guest MJ and me with her fourth clever song quiz . . . but don't get scared off, we eventually figure out the answer; see if you can beat us to the punch: identify the artist and title of each clip, and then string the clues together to come up with the overarching theme . . . good luck!

Teach Your Children (Fairly) Well Part II

I am the parent and my children are the children, and if I want to make an arbitrary rule, such as: if you're going to watch TV on a school night, then it has to be a documentary, then they need to abide by the rule and embrace the rule and not give me a bunch of shit about the rule . . . which is why, last week, when we were two minutes into Hoop Dreams, my son Alex said he wanted to go upstairs and read instead of watching and I did something unprecedented in the history of parenting--

I forced my child to watch TV instead of allowing him to read a book

but I had good reason for this . . . Roger Ebert lists Hoop Dreams as the number one movie of the 1990's and my son was being totally close-minded because he was angry about my "documentaries on school nights" rule . . . a rule which my wife and children should realize is never going to last, and if they could simply humor me for a bit and allow me to reign like a lunatic dictator over my tiny realm . . . and Alex ended up liking the film-- you can't not like it, it's great (though not as fast paced and violent and entertaining as Arrow, a show to which my kids are addicted).

Teach Your Children (Fairly) Well

I think I'm as good as any parent about feigning excitement about a perfect score on a social studies quiz (nice job with the triangular trade route!) or a school project (nice diorama!) but now that my boys have seen some actual excitement over a school accomplishment, they may realize what's what; to explain, Ian's PE teacher (who I know from coaching soccer) texted me on Tuesday, in the middle of the day, to tell me that my son Ian (a fifth grader) had toppled the school record for the PACER (Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run) and that the record he beat had stood for four years, so he wanted to commend Ian on an impressive effort . . . and I was even more impressed than the PE teacher by his accomplishment because Ian had really exhausted himself the night before-- we had an away Rec basketball game in South River (away rec basketball games?) and a lot of kids on my team bailed (because it's rec basketball) so we only had five people (three of which I drove to the game) and the other team was full of sixth graders and our team is all fourth and fifth graders and most of the kids on the team can't handle the ball, so Ian had to play every minute at point guard, and though he's small, he had to go down to the low post because he's willing to foul kids . . . anyway, I was very proud of him and told him so, and now I'm going to have to step up my acting when he gets a good grade in math or draws something nice . . . why is it so much easier to get excited about athletic achievement?

Dave vs. The Fuzzy Green Ball

Everything seems epic when you're sick, and so yesterday, during my drive to the MedExpress while running a fever (turned out to be bronchitis)-- I fought an epic battle against a worn out tennis ball; the ball kept rolling under my feet while I was driving down Route 18, and I was worried that it would become lodged under the gas or brake pedal, and so I repeatedly bent down and grabbed the ball from under my feet-- temporarily obscuring my view of the road-- and then tossed the ball to the back of the van . . . and moments later it would come rolling back up again, like it had a mind of its own, and so-- finally-- and, as I said earlier, I was running a fever and my mind was cloudy, I thought to put it in one of the many cupholders my Toyota van possesses, and this was a perfect fit-- the ball will stay lodged in there until my kids decide to remove it, so they can play catch in the car (and it is possible that this fairly obvious idea didn't dawn on me for so long because my old car, a Jeep Cherokee, had no cupholders and so I had to use the sneaker which resided in the passenger seat . . . there were rarely passengers brave enough to ride in the "deathbox," and I'm too sick to do any research-- so I'll leave this work to Sentence of Dave fanatics-- but I wonder how many automobile accidents are caused by unrestricted rolling tennis balls . . . I'm guessing this is at least as dangerous as trying to clip your dog's nails as a stoplight.

Dave Expounds Upon The Bachelor

It astonishes me how popular The Bachelor is-- I can't imagine why modern educated women would want to watch a bunch of ditsy bimbos humiliate themselves in order to win the favor of a good-looking guy-- but my wife likes it and so do the women at work, and I've watched ten minutes of the current season, in two rather disappointing five minute sessions, and this copious "research" has led me to a couple of conclusions:

1) the format of the show is demeaning enough, but at least most of the women have respectable title descriptions . . . Jubilee is a "war veteran" and Leah is an "event planner" and there is a "chiropractic assistant" and a "bartender" and a "news anchor," and Rachel has the guts to call herself "unemployed" and Tiara has a sense of humor and claims to be a "chicken enthusiast" . . . or maybe she actually is a chicken enthusiast-- who knows?-- but when I watched a bit on Monday night, I noticed that Emily's footer read "twin," and that's not a career or a title or even much of a description  . . . it's just a genetic coincidence-- it would be like if someone's title was "Huntington's Disease Carrier" or "Sickle Cell Candidate"-- you can check out the list if you want to see for yourself;

2) the first time I got sucked in was earlier in the season, when the girls had to play a soccer game in order to get some face-time with Ben . . . this excited me, as the girls are cute and fit, and I was really interested in who was the best soccer player-- these are traits you'd want in a wife, someone sporty and athletic and competitive and coordinated .. . and I assumed many of the girls would be moderately athletic, but apparently they just starve themselves to keep their figures, because they were terrible soccer players and the game was just embarrassing (and ABC did an awful job filming the match, you couldn't see how any of the play developed) and if I had my druthers and were doing a program like this, it would be all athletic contests and fitness tests, interspersed with a few cognitive exams, so that I could choose a woman who would produce the smartest, most athletic offspring . . . coming next fall: The Bachelor (of Eugenics).

The Deepest of All Questions

I'm not going to do any research on this topic-- too disgusting-- and my experience with the subject is purely anecdotal, but I'm fairly certain that the phenomenon is real; some weeks, my toenails grow faster than normal (and require clipping) and some weeks they don't seem to grow at all . . . so why is toenail growth variable and what causes this?

You Should Read Death Comes to the Archbishop (before you read Moby Dick)

In preparation for our trip to the American Southwest this summer, I am reading some of the classic literature set in that region; I started by re-reading Death Comes to the Archbishop, a nearly plotless collection of vignettes by Willa Cather, based on the lives of two French Catholic religious men-- a bishop and a priest-- who leave civilized Europe in the mid-1800's and travel to the wilds of the New Mexico Territory-- newly acquired by the United States after the Mexican-American War-- in order to establish an organized diocese amidst the corruption of the Spanish, the poverty of the Mexicans, and the traditions and mysticism of the Native Americans; I admit that's a mouthful for a synopsis, and that hardly does justice to what happens in the book, but I regard this as one of the best American novels ever written-- while I love Moby Dick, Cather's masterpiece is probably a more worthwhile read and it certainly addresses much more modern issues-- race, class, religion, mysticism, greed, politics, assimilation, and borders . . . it is an absolute refutation Crevecoeur's outdated "melting pot" metaphor . . . the book was published in 1927 and it is utterly modern, like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, it is a collection of climactic scenes and anecdotes (think There Will Be Blood or Magnolia) without much transition-- Elmore Leonard codified this into his mantra: "try to leave out all the parts people skip"; Cather's language is as rugged and sharply defined as the terrain she writes about . . . here are some of the passages I highlighted:

1) he seemed to be wandering in some geometrical nightmare;

2) he saw a flat white outline on the grey surface-- a white square made up of white squares . . . that his guide said, was the pueblo of Acoma;

3) one could not believe the number of square miles a man is able to sweep with the eye there could be so many uniform red hills . . . he had been riding among them since early morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he had stood still;

4) No priest can experience repentance and forgiveness of sin unless he himself falls into sin . . . otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic;

5) their Padre spoke like a horse for the last time: "Comete tu cola, comete tu cola!" (Eat your tail, Martinez, eat your tail!) Almost at once he died in convulsion;

6) in his experience, white people, when they addressed Indians, always put on a false face;

7) he had the pleasure of seeing the Navajo horsemen riding free over their great plains again . . . the two Frenchmen went as far as the Canyon de Chelly to behold the strange cliff ruins; once more crops were growing at the bottom of the world between the towering sandstone walls;

and while most of the prose is impeccably lucid, Cather was also not afraid to use specific words that will make you consult a dictionary (partibus, calabozo, codicil, pyx, hogan, coruscation, turbid, jalousies) but these only crop up occasionally, otherwise it is a smooth read; in the end, it is a tale of friendship between two religious men, Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant, in a harsh, complicated, inspirational, and fascinating environment; Cather's treatment of the Native Americans is empathetic and vivid (and must have influenced Aldous Huxley when he wrote Brave New World) and while she moves from mundane politics and vanity to the holiest of mysteries, the story never loses its historical grounding, it is set amongst realpeople-- Kit Carson especially-- and real events-- the Colorado Gold Rush near Pike's Peak and the building of Santa Fe's Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis Assisi, which Jean-Baptiste Lamy-- the man Bishop Latour was based upon-- oversaw and initiated . . . anyway, I've gone on far too long and I haven't even scratched the surface of what lies inside this book, but I guarantee it is an America that they don't teach you about in school, Jamestown and the Pilgrims and the Boston Tea Party and all that, and I'm sure when I'm visiting these spots this summer, Cather's words will ring in my ears . . . so if you feel like you want to read a classic piece of literature, and you don't want to slog through The Brothers Karamazov, I recommend this-- it's short, episodic, perfectly written, and full of valuable insight on the origins of our national character.

The Test 34: Elitist Stuff

This week on The Test, I quiz the ladies on some "highbrow stuff" and we all perform admirably-- Stacey invents a jazz musician, Cunningham corrects me on (of all things) a sporting quotation, I try "taking some stuff from my head" and fail miserably, and we all learn many valuable pieces of information from the Voice of God . . . give it shot, keep score, and see if you know any "elitist stuff."

Advice for Husbands

You can't just own the cell-phone, you also have to charge the cell-phone and carry the cell-phone on your person (if you want your wife to be able to contact you when something comes up).

Two Kinds of Rock Bands?

I can hear Zman's voice in my head as I write this-- and so: Yes Zman, I know . . . there are two kinds of people, people who divide people into two kinds of people and people who don't-- but it's rare that any pub night discussions stay in my brain through the night until the next morning, and this one did; my friend Alec and I determined that there are two kinds of rock bands-- and I did my research and watched some concert footage to confirm this-- and here they are:

1) bands where everyone stays in the same spot on the stage-- The Grateful Dead and Yes come to mind . . . this may be due to the fact that the music they are playing is progressive and difficult (Yes) or it might be  simply because everyone is so whacked out on drugs  that getting near another human would totally freak them out (The Grateful Dead) or they might be introverted weirdos (Neutral Milk Hotel, Greasetruck)

2) then there are bands like Van Halen and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, where there's lots of running around and interaction and singing into the same microphone . . . and while I know this is hypocritical of me, considering I don't know where my toothbrush has been, I still find this unhygienic and a little goofy . . . what if someone in the band has a cold-- you don't need that stuff all over the microphone-- nor do I need anyone in my space while I'm playing a guitar solo . . . I think the Talking Heads are a nice middle ground between these two styles, they are fairly animated, especially David Byrnes, but don't stray too far from their spots on stage, and I guess there are also bands where one person is all over the place (Jimi Hendrix) while the rest of the crew stay in their spot . . . I certainly haven't thought this theory through completely, but perhaps Zman will give me some other categories to add to the rather restrictive dichotomy with which I began.

Humboldt: More Than a Big Squid

Alexander von Humboldt is largely forgotten (aside from the Humboldt Current and the Humboldt Squid) but he was the most intrepid and famous man of his age, and his influences on our perception of nature and the environment were monumental; Andrea Wulf's book The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World is everything you could ever want to know about Humboldt, and also features wonderful chapters on the folks that he influenced and inspired; every time I thought I had enough Humboldt, she described another inspired adventure, or how he met up with and influenced another notable person, and Wulf even writes wonderful mini-biographies of some of the people who were most indebted to Humboldt's writing and discoveries . . . here are a few of the many memorable things Wulf describes:

1) Humboldt was buddies with Goethe and was the inspiration for his most famous character Dr. Faustus, who made a pact with the devil in "exchange for infinite knowledge,"

2) Humboldt never married and the exact nature of his sexuality was ambiguous . . . but he certainly enjoyed the company of men, one of his most celebrated bromances was with his travelling and writing partner, Aime Bonpland . . . Wulf describes them as a "great team" because they were exact opposite: "Humboldt spread frantic activity" while Bonpland "carried an air of calmness and docility,"

3) when Humboldt and Bonpland were in South America, they had an especially fruitful time experimenting with electric eels . . . they drove horses into the water where the eels were and watched the "gruesome spectacle" and for "four hours they conducted an array of dangerous tests including holding an eel with two hands, touching an eel with one hand and a bit of metal with the other, or Humboldt touching an eel while holding Bonpland's hand (with Bonpland feeling the jolt)"

4) In Views of Nature he explained the "correlation between the external world and our mood"

5) Humboldt spend quite a bit of time with Thomas Jefferson, and inspired Jefferson to look for megafauna in North America (to show up French Naturalist Georges-Louis Buffon, who claimed that everything in the New World was feeble compared to its European version)

6) Charles Darwin was inspired by Humboldt and he "modelled his own writing on Humboldt's, fusing scientific writing with poetic description"

7) Hector Berlioz, the great romantic composer of Symphony Fantastique, loved Humboldt's book Cosmos and claimed that it was incredibly popular among musicians;

8) Edgar Allan Poe's last work, the 130 page prose poem Eureka, was "dedicated to Humboldt and was a direct response to Cosmos"

9) Humboldt advised Simon Bolivar, annoyed Napoleon, inspired Thoreau to write Walden, influenced John Muir and the entire conservation movement, and had loads of other far-reaching implications with his prodigious correspondence, his travels (to South America and Siberia in particular), his copious experiments and measurements, his many publications, and his cult of personality . . . this book is so dense with detail that I can barely keep one-tenth of it straight, but one thing will remain in my brain years and years from now, Humboldt is more than the guy who discovered a really scary predatory six foot long, one hundred pound squid (although that's a great accomplishment in itself).

It's All How You Look At Things

At first, when I realized someone had stolen my snow shovel off my front porch on Saturday afternoon, during the height of the blizzard, I was indignant, but I've chosen to change my perspective on this, and instead think of the loss of the shovel as a charitable donation to a small business, to encourage entrepreneurship . . . because it was certainly stolen by one of the roving bands of shoveling opportunists, who come into town whenever there is a big storm, in order to make some cash . . . and while I doubt these folks are of the demographic that read my blog, just in case, I'd like to address you directly, the stealer-of-my-shovel, and suggest that:

1) we could turn this donation into a micro-loan . . . now that the weather has turned warm, you could simply toss my shovel back onto my porch now that you're done with it (and if you could also return my neighbor's shovels, which were also stolen, and which you probably had a hand in, that would be fantastic) but if not . . .

2) I hope you make good use of the shovels, and we get lots of snow, so you can parlay your theft into a major windfall, and I hope someday, when you own and operate a large plowing conglomerate, you remember your humble beginnings and thank me (and I'd also like to point out that our dog did his job, and barked at you, but I was napping and Cat was in the kitchen and figured it was just one of the kids throwing a sled on the front porch, not a shovel stealer, so you'd better watch out the next time you try this, because my dog is onto you).

Farewell Four Letter Friends . . .

In December my audio streaming service, Rdio, bit the dust . . . according to the company's design lead, Wilson Miner, the service was made for "snobby album purists," and I guess that's why it didn't thrive (the company filed for bankruptcy and Pandora bought what was left) and I guess that's also why I loved it and was willing to pay $4.99 a month for it-- I read Miner's quip in an article by Kevin Nguyen called "Burying Rdio, the Music App for Annoying Men" . . . and several days ago, while I was still in the process of mourning Rdio, I received a text message from PTel, my cheap mobile phone provider, and it's curtains for them as well . . . and this makes me quite sad, because they always provided Platinum level telecommunications (aside from the lack of service in Manchester, Vermont and the fact that I had to hold my phone out the window in my classroom in order to send a text message) and while this is serious stuff-- I've lost two pillars of my digital universe in less than a month's time-- I'll take solace in the fact that Netflix still works, and I'll encourage you to use Netflix to watch the funniest single episode of a sitcom ever made, "Charlie Work," which is the fourth episode of the tenth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia . . . and you may be thinking: How can Dave claim he knows the funniest episode of any sitcom ever . . . how can I trust his opinion, when he can't even pick a good cell-phone company or a good music streaming service? and while I admit this is reasonable logic, I will humbly ask you to watch "Charlie Work," which has an insanely high rating on IMDB, and then if you can provide a single episode of a sitcom that you believe is funnier, and I will pit them head to head, and using my patented situation comedy arbitration method, I will determine an unbiased victor.

Giant Reptile Wades Through Snowy Wasteland

Friday night, my wife was driving down Route 1 and she did double take when she read the big electronic variable message sign . . . she was already nervous about Winter Storm Jonas, and this sounded even worse . . . the message on the sign read: LIZARD WARNING.

Dave Defeats His Wife in a Battle of Logic!

It's a rare occurrence, but I always relish when my wife screws up-- in fact, it's the topic of the very first Sentence of Dave-- and so it was with great pleasure, when my wife came down the stairs and into the kitchen yesterday morning, that I asked her-- facetiously-- if she had heard the weather report the night before, you know . . . the weather report about Winter Storm Jonas, the mighty blizzard that had dominated the news for the latter half of the week . . . and though she knew I was up to something, she admitted to having knowledge of the storm, and this admission buried her, because my next question was: "then why did you leave two six packs of beer on our back porch?" and at first she tried to maneuver her way out of it-- she said she didn't think that they would have been buried and she pointed out that I occasionally put beer in the snow, but she finally confessed that it was an absurd move, and that if I hadn't seen the bottle caps, just above the blanket of snow (and wondered if some fruity beer fairy had come in the night and left a six pack Illusive Traveler Grapefruit Shandy and a six pack of Leinenkugel Berry Weiss as some sort of blizzard survival kit) then the beer would have been buried in a snow drift until spring, the bottles shattered, and-- more importantly-- my wife would have been beerless for the duration of the blizzard.

The Test . . . Snow Day Edition

There's nothing better on a snowy day, just after you've shoveled out the mouth of your driveway (and then the plow comes by again and undoes all your hard work) than sitting back with a cup of hot chocolate and listening to the newest episode of The Test . . . and this one is hot off the press, with real time blizzard allusions from The Voice of God . . . check it out, play along at home, and see if you can beat me (you'll definitely beat Cunningham on this one).
 

Some Advice For Dog Owners During the Winter Months

Open the poop bag when you are in the house, before you venture out in the the cold with your dog, because it's very difficult to pry open one of those little bags when your fingers are numb (and I would have said pre-open the bag before you walk the dog, except that George Carlin would roll over in his grave if I used the prefix "pre" in that manner).

Toothbrushes Part I

When we were young and wild, my wife and I shared a toothbrush-- and this went on for over a decade; now that we're mature, we have our separate brushes (which made my students very happy . . . they were quite disgusted by the fact that we shared one brush for that many years) but I'm loath to admit that I'm not sure which brush is mine, so I use whichever one I grab first (there are four brushes in the cup, two purple and two blue) and so I'm going to check with my wife and see if she thinks that a particular brush is "hers" and report back to you . . . we might still be sharing a toothbrush afterall.

Dave Uses Evidence and Jazz Hands to Argue His Point

Back in November, I took some flak in the comments for calling jazz vocalization "unbearable," and so I'd like to present Exhibit A, Tom Lellis singing "For Better Days Ahead," a song I heard on WBGO on my way to work; I'd also like to point out that these days I primarily listen to jazz, more than any other genre, so this isn't some off-the-cuff generalization . . . jazz singing almost always ruins the music; if you can sincerely listen to "For Better Days" and tell me that you enjoy the singing-- that it makes the song better-- then you can smack me across the face with your jazz hands . . . it's the same deal with classical music-- which I love-- versus opera, which annoys me (the song also features a flute solo, which is invariably the kiss of death).

Making Us Sleepy

The Netflix documentary Making a Murderer is sometimes compelling, sometimes boring, sometimes biased and sometimes soporific . . . my wife and I took turns snoozing during the course of the ten episodes, and while I will go out on a limb and say that Len Kachinsky is the worst lawyer ever (in Jeff Albertson's voice) and it seems that the series has exposed some corruption and malpractice and misrepresentation in the two cases, and that Brendan Dassey's constitutional rights were violated, there is still no theory as to who else could have committed the crime-- there's no way the entire thing was a police frame-up and it doesn't seem likely that some super-genius criminal killed Theresa Holbach and then set up Stephen Avery . . . and this Slate article points out some interesting facts that the documentary left out and suggests that the perspective of the filmmakers might be very biased . . . so while the case and the surrounding procedures do point to some systemic failures of the American justice system, I'm just not sure how outraged to be over this one particular case, where I think the police and prosecution (and even Len Kachinsky) knew they had guilty parties and just wanted to make sure they were convicted, and crossed some ethical lines in order to do this.

Epic Adventures in Parenting

A banner week: two epic journeys, one for each child;

1) after a packed Sunday of sporting events-- I played indoor soccer and coached my younger son's basketball team, and my older son attended basketball practice (where they installed a new offense) and then played in a basketball game, where he took several hard charges and an elbow to the windpipe, and then he went directly from the basketball game to a futsal game at Piscataway High School, and we arrived as the game started, and in he went . . . so by the end of the game, he was exhausted, and I was wiped too-- indoor soccer kills my knees-- and just after we left the building, we realized that he forgot his water bottle, so we went back in, looked for it, and couldn't find it, then we exited the building a different way, realized we didn't know where we were, and couldn't get back in, so we circumnavigated the building, in the dark and the wind, both of us barely able to walk and close to tears, with no clue as to where the car was (and Piscataway High School is huge) and when we finally found the car, there was a water bottle in the front seat, and I checked the backpack and the other water bottle was inside-- so he must have given it to me right after the game and I forgot, so the mishap was entirely my fault;

2) I got home after a faculty meeting and my younger son should have been home already, but he wasn't, so I went to Ben's house, but he wasn't there (and Ben didn't know where he was) and I went to Micah's house and he wasn't there (and Micah hadn't seen him) and while the logical part of my brain knew he was fine, the creative section was designing open wells for him to fall in and white vans to abduct him-- and by this time he was "missing" for a good forty-five minutes, so I walked over to the school to see if they had any information, and the secretary in the main office said I should check the library, because they were having a "Game Day" and I remembered that he had a form about this, but that kids got selected by a lottery system, and I never heard anything about it, but when I went to the library, Ian was there, playing checkers with his buddy and I was very relieved, and on the way out I told the secretary I found him, and I must have looked pretty distraught because she asked me if I wanted to sit down for a moment and have a piece of candy (which was very sweet of her, but I had to refuse because the dog was tied up just outside the door . . . he accompanied me on this absurd journey) .

The Test 32: Stretchy Horses and Twisty Mustaches (Salvador Dali)

There's no need for The Voice of God this week on The Test, because Cunningham provides everything you wanted to know about Salvador Dali (but were afraid to ask) and while Stacey and I do a serviceable job answering the questions (and making jokes) there is also a bonus conflict where I call Stacey a "menace to audio" and Cunningham jumps right on the bandwagon . . . give it a shot, keep score, and see if you can beat the pros (after 32 episodes, I think we have the right to call ourselves professional test-takers).

Freaks and Geeks: One Season Is Enough

I'm not sure if you can spoil a show that's sixteen years old, but if you've never seen Freaks and Geeks, you need to watch it immediately-- before you read this sentence, because there are spoilers ahead-- and if you've never watched because you don't want to get so emotionally attached to a show that's only one season long, I can understand that, but it's worth watching for the music alone and if you're afraid it will end with you wanting more, you couldn't be more wrong-- in fact, it's probably better off that the show got cancelled, because the last several episodes are (serendipitously or not) cumulatively one of the best endings to any show ever made (maybe because they didn't know the show was to be cancelled, so there were no expectations) and each character gets the ending they deserve:

1) Ken overcomes his inhibitions about his once hermaphroditic girlfriend;

2) Nick uses his rhythmic abilities and gawkiness to conquer the disco dance floor . . . although he can't defeat a disco-magician;

3) Neal comes to terms with his dad's philandering and his brother and mother's acceptance of this;

4) Bill comes to terms with his mom dating Coach Fredericks;

5) Sam realizes that dating Cindy is far less wonderful than he imagined, and breaks it off;

6) Daniel (played brilliantly by James Franco) plays Advanced D&D with the geeks, turning the high school social on its head;

7) Lindsey ditches the summer academy in Ann Arbor in order to follow the dead in a VW bus with her freak friend Kim . . .

and there is no coming back from this . . . it's like the final two episodes of The Shield (except funny and poignant instead of disturbing and tortured).

Hey Waldo, You Should Have Read Your Humboldt

Ralph Waldo Emerson espoused the transcendental notions that "nature always wears the colors of the spirit" and "there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend," but I think we all know that the opposite is more often true-- if it's a beautiful sunny day at the shore, low humidity and a crisp breeze, then you can't help enjoying the weather, even if a half dozen of your dearest friends were just eaten by a school of rampant hammerhead sharks . . . and we know in the bleak winter months that some of us get the blues (scientifically known as seasonal affective disorder) and drink and eat way too much, and while Emerson got the cause and effect wrong, it appears that his predecessor, Alexander Humboldt, got it right; Andrea Wulf, in her fantastic book The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World, explains that "Humboldt showed how nature could have an influence on people's imagination . . . what we might take for granted today-- that there is a correlation between the external world and our mood -- was a revelation to Humboldt's readers."

Weird Al's Next Project?

God knows why, but my son has chosen the "diorama" option for a school project, and while I hate dioramas-- and question their pedagogical necessity-- I would really like it if Weird Al did a parody of "Panorama" by The Cars, and made the lyrics all about having to do a school project . . . the song writes itself, really . . . I just want to be in your diooooramaaa.

Chronological Dyslexia

I have two reasons for this brief moment of chronological dyslexia:

1) I never use chapstick;

2) it was early in the morning;

and I would also like to point out that I immediately realized that I should have asked the question first, and then committed the action based on the answer to the question, but I didn't do it like that . . . instead, I did it like this: I picked up a generic plastic and pink tube off the desk in the kitchen, removed the top, applied some of the waxy substance to my lips, and then asked my wife: "This is chapstick, right, not a glue stick?"

Dave Wins (Inadvertently Funny) Comment of the Year!

My friend and colleague Stacey was so amused by this comment thread in response to this sentence that she printed it out and taped it to the whiteboard in the office . . . I missed the word "downtown" in my friend's comment, making the implications of my rejoinder rather perverse.

Dave Confesses to a Crime of Passion

Yesterday after school, I stopped at Wawa for coffee, and-- while I was waiting in line-- I was tempted by the big cookies on display by the register; once I decided I was going to get a big cookie, I decided I was going to get the biggest cookie, and while I was comparing them-- handling all the cookies, trying to find the absolute biggest cookie with the most chocolate chips, one of the big cookies slipped out of the cellophane and fell onto the floor . . . so I kicked it under the low ledge of the counter, grabbed the second biggest cookie from the rack, paid, and made a clean getaway . . . and if I do ever get brought to the bar for this crime, I will blame poor packaging (and not the true culprit: gluttony).

One For the Ladies . . . or Should I Say, Thirteen for the Ladies and One for the Boys

My wife has thirteen different bottles of hair care and body wash and skin cleansing products in the shower, while the boys only have one all-purpose bottle of Dial Kids No Tears Body and Hair Wash . . . and I think this is an egregious imbalance of power in this region of the house and it needs to be rectified soon or the region is going to erupt in about of asymmetrical warfare.

The Test 31: Colors (It's Not Easy Being Green)

This week on The Test, I administer a quiz specifically tailored to our special guest-- her name is Gabby Green and so the questions revolve around colors; Stacey is not particularly impressed by this very literal connection, but-- despite this-- a good time is had by all (there's even an extemporaneous test within the test, thanks to some quick thinking by Stacey) and, at the end, God saves the integrity of the show with a well placed BEEP.

The Wit of the Parking Lot?

One of the best things about Manchester, Vermont is the Equinox Preserve, a beautiful piece of land with a number of well marked hiking trails criss-crossing Equinox Mountain and circumnavigating Equinox Pond; I took the dog there one afternoon after a morning of snowboarding-- Cat and the kids didn't want to go, and I was looking forward to a serene walk on a snowy trail, Sirius leading the way; there were quite a few cars parked along the road approaching the trailhead (it was New Year's Day, so I guess everyone had the same idea) but I saw that there were three spots open in the dirt parking lot at the end of the road, and so I pulled in and as I was pulling into the middle spot (which was the deepest parking spot-- the spots were delineated by piles of snow, clearly marked where the plow had pushed the pile, and I wanted the van to be as unobtrusive as possible in the lot) I heard a loud BEEP . . . unbeknownst to me, there was a car right behind me-- which was shocking enough (I think I was in my own world, out in the woods, without wife or kids to distract me) and then when I got out of the car, the woman in the car that BEEPED at me starting giving me shit about where I parked, but she was a Vermonter, so instead of cursing me out, Jersey style, she kept starting and stopping sentences, which was even more annoying: "I don't like the way you parked your . . . it's hard to get in there . . . there's not room for other . . . you should have . . ." and I was so taken aback by this that instead of telling her that I had parked in the deepest spot because my van was big, or simply telling here to fuck off, instead I just stared at her like she had three heads-- I often get awkward when I'm in a brand-new situation, and that's how I felt-- but now I realize that she was simple annoyed that SHE had to pull in between two cars, she wanted me to park all the way over, so that she would have an easier time parking and getting out of her BMW SUV; I got the dog out of my car and was starting to walk towards the trail as she parked her car, and then she got out and continued giving me shit in her mealy-mouthed manner, and I finally was able to process this brand-new situation, and I said, "There's three spots, you can see by the plow marks," and then I backed up behind the cars and made a point to melodramatically eyeball my parking job and I said, "I nailed it, I'm right in the middle, I couldn't have done a better job" and as I walked out of the lot to the trail, some other people who had witnessed the scene smiled at me, a smile that said That lady was NUTS and I nodded knowingly at them, and as I walked through the woods, I thought what I really should have done was pace off my parking job on each side, to show here that I was right exactly in the middle, but it was hard enough for me to think of anything to say at all, it was such an odd scene, and it polluted the serenity of my hike (but I felt righteously vindicated when I got back to the lot, and there were cars parked comfortably on either side of my van, illustrating that I had indeed "nailed it" and parked right in the center of the three spots).

Serial Season Two vs. Dave's Brain!

Last year, I taught Serial Season 1 to my high school seniors-- I couched the podcast within a process analysis unit, and the kids really enjoyed it; Serial Season 2 is a bit harder to get a grip on, but I like it even better than Season 1, perhaps because it reminds me of all the things I learned when I lived in Syria, and-- despite the difficulties, I am teaching to my seniors and (with the threat of constant quizzing) they are doing a fantastic job with a dense and difficult story . . . this time I've embedded the podcast in a compare/contrast unit, because that seems to be the main structural trope that ties the story together . . . here are some of the topics that the podcast invites you to compare and contrast:

1) the liberal interpretation of Bergdahl's story vs. the conservative perspective . . . Katy Waldman (on  the Slate's Serial Spoiler) calls the tone of the podcast "radical empathy" while many of Bergdahl's fellow soldiers consider him a deserter and a traitor;

2) Bergdahl and Jason Bourne;

3) Bergdahl and a "golden chicken";

4) Bergdahl and a "ready made loaf";

5) Bergdahl and and a "free-floating astronaut" with no tether;

6) the American Army and a "lumbering machine" and an AT-AT;

7) the Taliban as a mouse running beneath the machine's legs;

8) Pakistan as "home base," the mousehole in the wall in Tom & Jerry;

9) the rumors about Bergdahl vs. the reality of his captivity;

10) The Haqqani Network and the Sopranos;

11) Bergdahl's imprisonment and treatment vs. the imprisonment and treatment of Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib;

12) the feelings about infidels of moderate Muslims vs. radical Muslims;

13) the code of conduct required for POW videos vs. actual military expectations for POW videos;

14) the sovereign state of Pakistan and the tribal area of North Waziristan;

15) the captivity of Bergdahl and the captivity of David Rohde . . . Rohde was kidnapped and held for three months by the Haqqani network in the same area as Bergdahl at nearly the same time, he is a civilian journalist and not a soldier, and he wasn't blindfolded and isolated as much as Bergdahl, but his story is still very helpful in understanding what happened to Bergdahl;

16) the entire story and the children's book Zoom;

and these are the issues that I think will surface in the future-- I'm speculating, of course, but that's necessary when you're teaching a piece that's not finished yet . . . it's like teaching a book that hasn't been finished, it's exhilarating and exhausting, but also really fun; I can teach Hamlet and Henry IV in my sleep because I know what happens, while doing this is really keeping me on my toes, and this is where I imagine the story is going:

17) there will be comparisons drawn Bergdahl's endurance in captivity and the hero's journey . . . the fact that Mark Boal was interested in interviewing him for a movie and the fact that he is the longest held captive since the Vietnam War and the fact that they are viewing him with such empathy in the podcast leads me to believe it will head in this direction;

18) good leaders vs. toxic leaders . . . if Bergdahl is going to be portrayed as heroic, Serial is going to have to provide a reasonable story of why he deserted his post, and I think they are saving that portion of the narrative and I also think that it is going to open a whole crazy can of worms about the military and it's purpose;

19) the motivation behind Bergdahl's decision and the Pixar film Inside Out . . . which I have promised to show to my students if they survive the podcast;

20) the reaction you should have when you think about how long Bergdahl spent in captivity and the following clip from Grosse Pointe Blank (and while I realize that it doesn't connect exactly in a mathematical sense, the tone is perfect).

Is This Gross?

In a brand spanking new recurring segment that probably won't recur any time soon, Dave asks himself:

1) is this gross?

2) how gross is it?

so let's give it a whirl with two recent scenarios:

a) three times this week, on my eight minute commute home, I got so hungry that I stopped at QuickChek and each time I bought a bag of Dill Pickle flavored potato chips;

b) during snack time in the English Office, after eating two "crunchy rice rollers," I sneezed-- and while I directed my sneeze away from the other two ladies in the room, I wasn't able to direct my sneeze into the crook of my elbow (which is now regarded as the hygienic method of sneezing) because it was a wildly violent sneeze, not caused by sickness, but instead caused by the "crunchy rice rollers" and so I sprayed mucous-coated dried rice particles all over the chair next to me (and some of the mucous coated dried rice particles certainly shot straight through the open door and into my boss's office . . . and she's very pregnant) and then-- as if to show me up-- moments later Krystina sneezed perfectly into the crook of her elbow, and even though she was eating an apple, she didn't spray anything anywhere;

so . . . after much deliberation, I have decided that neither of these actions were gross; dill pickles are delicious and crisp and salty-- they fulfill the same craving as a potato chip-- and so therefore, a dill flavored chip is perfectly acceptable (it's definitely not as gross as Greektown Gyro or New York Reuben flavored chips) and, as far as the sneeze . . . I've decided that there's nothing you can do when dried rice tickles the back of your throat-- it's not like you can hold back a sneeze, because if you do, your brain shoots out your ears and there's no way to direct that kind of violence into the crook of your elbow.

The Breathtaking Beauty of America's Backroads and Byways . . .

Yesterday, as I drove through Milltown, New Jersey, I had the privilege to ride behind a monster pick-up truck with the words "Sinister Ride" written in evil calligraphy on the rear window; the truck also sported chrome dual exhaust stacks, a couple more stencilled phrases-- "The Boss" and "Mud Nugget Racing," and-- most significantly-- a huge pair of rubber testicles hanging under the trailer hitch . . . these "bumper nuts," as they are known, were realistically colored and textured (i.e wrinkly), and each nut was the size of a pineapple; as the truck rolled along, they dangled and bounced, and I must admit, they were grotesquely mesmerizing, and while I won't deign to speculate on the sort of person who would drive such a vehicle, I must admit that he's certainly got balls.