Considering we were only away for one night, our trip to the City of Brotherly Love had plenty of highs and lows:
1) listening to Steve Buscemi's audio tour of Eastern State Penitentiary was spooky and excellent-- and the kids really enjoyed the ruined ambiance, the haunting anecdotes, and the punishment cells . . . plus, I coerced my son Alex into asking me if I believed in ghosts;
2) after touring the penitentiary, we decided to eat at Bridgid's instead of Jack's Firehouse-- both are great places and Jack's is right across from the jail-- but when we got to Bridgid's, we learned they were serving brunch . . . yuck . . . nobody in my family even deigns to say the word "brunch," let alone eat it and so we turned around and walked back to Jack's and they were serving brunch . . . but this turned out to be fine, because they had regular lunch stuff on the menu as well as brunch stuff, and my kids were highly amused by the finches that kept sneaking in through the big firehouse doors and stealing cornbread;
3) on the ride to Philly we listened to stand-up comedy, something my older son has gotten into lately-- and I tried to turn him on to Steve Martin and Steven Wright, but those early comedy albums aren't recorded all that clearly and the compression is terrible so it's hard to hear the jokes and then if you turn up the volume, the applause and screaming between bits blows out your eardrums;
4) we settled on Jim Gaffigan, he's funny, my son loves him, his voice is crystal clear and his albums are not only family friendly, but he also makes plenty of jokes about hotel rooms and hotel pools, which was perfect, since we were staying in a hotel with an indoor pool;
5) just as Jim Gaffigan predicted, the hotel pool was kind of gross-- it was a billion degrees in the pool room, too hot to lounge and read, and there were some very young kids in the pool, who would have probably urinated into the water if they weren't so dehydrated from the heat;
6) my kids loved Rocket Fizz, a store full of weird candy and "gourmet" soda-- Alex got a grapefruit pop that was tolerably good, and Ian got some sweet marionberry concoction called Martian Poop, which he had trouble finishing . . . but he kept the bottle as a souvenir;
7) we had been walking all day, and we kept on walking-- we started in the museum district (we were staying at the Sheraton) and went all the way down Arch Street, through the old city, out to Penn's Landing and then down to this new spot, Spruce Street Harbor Park, which was full of food trucks and corn hole and giant chess and hammocks and live music and weird hanging lights and would have been fun, if it wasn't insanely packed with people, and so we kept on walking, to South Street and ate at a place called Nora's which had decent authentic Mexican food and incredibly authentic Mexican weather (I sat next to the little portable air-conditioner which was maintaining between 86 and 85 degrees) and I was slurping down lots of their super-spicy churrasco salsa so my balding head was covered with droplets of sweat which my son said looked like "warriors ready to do battle in a forest";
8) after ice-cream on South Street, we took our first family Uber and the driver was super nice and full of information and she arrived quickly, which was fantastic because it was starting to rain;
9) the kids were happy watching a Harry Potter marathon and I was happy to pass out at nine;
10) I was not happy to be awoken at 1 AM by my wife, who told me I needed to find a 24 hour pharmacy and get my son allergy medicine and ibuprofen, because he had a terrible earache-- I blame the gross pool-- and I was less happy when I found a Walgreens and it was closed and then I walked a long way in the rain to a Rite-Aid, and then couldn't get the Uber app to work on my wife's phone, and so I took a regular cab back to the hotel . . . the driver was indifferent;
11) the medicine worked and my son passed out, but I couldn't fall back to sleep-- probably from all the stimulus of walking the city streets late at night-- lots of sketchy folks, drunk people, and restaurant workers finishing the late shift;
12) the hotel pool was closed Monday morning, and so the hotel gym was overrun with kids-- I bailed on my workout after a few minutes;
13) we had trouble finding a spot for some breakfast food and finally settled on Dunkin' Donuts-- yuck-- and the stools were all taken and my son Alex sat on the floor and started eating his Boston creme, until we explained to him that if you're civilized, you usually don't sit on the floor of a grubby chain restaurant in a major city and eat donuts-- Alex is twelve years old, so you'd think he'd know this;
14) we had a great time at the Drexel Academy of Natural Sciences . . . it's not the Museum of Natural History, but it's still full of great stuff-- and the film on how they make the museum dioramas is worth the price of admission-- there are zero bones in those stuffed animals-- and we got to see a possum up close and personal, they are perhaps the most ugly misshapen mammal in North America (and yes I considered the armadillo in that calculation).
The Test 51: Dave Does a Song Quiz?
This week on The Test, after weeks of fanfare, I finally unveil my first song quiz, and while I make my case on how it is far better than any of Stacey's song quizzes, empirically, this may not be the case (as the ladies discover) but despite the problems, we still have a good time-- see if you can figure out the overarching theme from the seven clips (and as a bonus, I reveal my plans for season two of the show).
Textbooks Matter
I've been binge-listening to all the old episodes of Vox's policy podcast The Weeds-- and while I'm not sure if I'm retaining all that much, I am learning how little I know about how government policy works-- which is always the first step in getting smarter-- anyway, this episode taught me about a Brookings Institution study by Thomas Kane that finds that good textbooks are clearly linked to academic success (especially in fourth and fifth grade math) and buying new textbooks is an easier solution than replacing mediocre or poor teachers with better teachers-- it's much harder to find good teachers and/or train them, and firing bad teachers takes time and resources-- and the gains from having a good textbook are significant, as Kane explains:
student achievement would rise overall roughly an average of 3.6 percentile points . . . although it might sound small, such a boost in the average teacher’s effectiveness would be larger than the improvement the typical teacher experiences in their first three years on the job, as they are just learning to teach . . .
which is a HUGE gain, because the difference between a first-year teacher and third year teacher is the difference between pandemonium and order; I also learned all about the new education policy that replaced No Child Left Behind in this episode and why there might be less standardized testing in our future. . . and this article is a nice summary of some of the lessons learned from what didn't work with the previous national education policies . . . and the takeaway from this rambling sentence is that you've got to feel dumber to get smarter.
student achievement would rise overall roughly an average of 3.6 percentile points . . . although it might sound small, such a boost in the average teacher’s effectiveness would be larger than the improvement the typical teacher experiences in their first three years on the job, as they are just learning to teach . . .
which is a HUGE gain, because the difference between a first-year teacher and third year teacher is the difference between pandemonium and order; I also learned all about the new education policy that replaced No Child Left Behind in this episode and why there might be less standardized testing in our future. . . and this article is a nice summary of some of the lessons learned from what didn't work with the previous national education policies . . . and the takeaway from this rambling sentence is that you've got to feel dumber to get smarter.
Higher and Higher Dudgeon
Nothing puts me in a higher state of dudgeon than having to look up exactly what "high dudgeon" means (and now that I know what it means, I'll be using the phrase to put other people in a state of high dudgeon at my overbearing prolixity).
Cold > Heat
When it's cold and I'm tired, I fall into a deep, dreamless slumber, but when it's hot and I'm tired, I get listless and crabby and my feet swell and I want to start a land war in Asia.
Dr. Ferrari Makes You Go Faster
I knew Lance Armstrong had been involved in a doping scandal, but I didn't understand the extent until I listened to the Planet Money episode "Lance Armstrong and the Business of Doping"-- I will warn you, in case you're vasovagal like me, that there's plenty of blood in this episode, but I learned plenty: cycling is a team sport, so not only did Armstrong have to use the services of the aptly named Dr. Ferrari, but so did his teammates-- it was just as important that their blood was super-rich-- and this required a large-scale cover-up, plenty of subterfuge, and a code of silence . . . but there is a silver-lining, it seems that large-scale doping may have been curbed a bit recently, as winning times are much slower than they once were . . . but it's only a matter of time before the riders figure out some other way to super-charge their bodies; anyway, if you're not familiar with the specifics of the scandal, this is a good place to start.
Words of Wisdom from One Sibling to Another
My older son gave this piece of advice to his younger brother: "You can't really make yo'mama jokes to me because we come from the same mother."
When You're 46, Jargon > Slang
While it's embarrassing and cheesy for folks over thirty to use the lexicon of the youth-- I try to never use slang in front of my students unless it's obviously ironic-- but I did learn some excellent terms that I can sprinkle into conversation this week, I picked them up while listening to Vox's super-wonky policy podcast The Weeds:
1) dark fiber . . . is not bran cereal, it's a term for fiber optic cable that is not being used-- no light pulses are going through it, so it's "dark" . . . during the dotcom boom, shitloads of fiber optic cable was laid, and then the bubble burst, but the infrastructure was in place, just "dark";
2) shadow inventory . . . is not a bunch of captured souls in Satan's warehouse, it's the properties in the real estate market that are in foreclosure or haven't been listed because people are waiting for the market to improve, and this makes it difficult to peg the supply because there's al this inventory in the shadows, lurking . . . this reminds of the the term "overhang" in the diamond market, which refers to the massive amount of shadow inventory that prevents used diamonds from being worth anything near what a new one costs;
3) decouple . . . we're not talking trains, we're talking about decoupling health care from employment, which has its pros and cons, but mainly pros-- which is why most first world nations do it that way . . . anyway, while I won't be using any of the new slang words I learned in the near future (although once I turn seventy-five, I'm using all the youthful slang, because nothing is more hysterical than a really old codger claiming "this shizzle is off the hook") but I'm certainly going to try to work this new economic jargon into my daily conversation, preferably, all in one long intimidating sentence.
1) dark fiber . . . is not bran cereal, it's a term for fiber optic cable that is not being used-- no light pulses are going through it, so it's "dark" . . . during the dotcom boom, shitloads of fiber optic cable was laid, and then the bubble burst, but the infrastructure was in place, just "dark";
2) shadow inventory . . . is not a bunch of captured souls in Satan's warehouse, it's the properties in the real estate market that are in foreclosure or haven't been listed because people are waiting for the market to improve, and this makes it difficult to peg the supply because there's al this inventory in the shadows, lurking . . . this reminds of the the term "overhang" in the diamond market, which refers to the massive amount of shadow inventory that prevents used diamonds from being worth anything near what a new one costs;
3) decouple . . . we're not talking trains, we're talking about decoupling health care from employment, which has its pros and cons, but mainly pros-- which is why most first world nations do it that way . . . anyway, while I won't be using any of the new slang words I learned in the near future (although once I turn seventy-five, I'm using all the youthful slang, because nothing is more hysterical than a really old codger claiming "this shizzle is off the hook") but I'm certainly going to try to work this new economic jargon into my daily conversation, preferably, all in one long intimidating sentence.
The Test Turns 50!
This week on The Test, Cunningham teaches us a lesson about finishing strong-- not only does she quiz us on the closing lines of some famous novels, but she also finishes the episode with a rousingly inspirational peroration . . . Stacey and decide that we prefer to start like a ball of fire and then fizzle . . . and that's exactly how we perform on this test.
New Slang (for Dave)
I've learned a lot of new slang in the past two weeks, from both the youth and the elders of society:
1) mansplaining . . . this is when a woman explains something and no one listens, but then a man explains it the same way, but LOUDER and people pay attention;
2) cut a bitch . . . as in "if this shizzle continues I may have to cut a bitch," which indicates that all other methods have been exhausted and the only alternative may be violence . . . I'm not sure if you can substitute "bee-otch" for bitch in this idiom;
3) lit . . . this means "off the hook" or extremely fun and excellent, as in "that party was lit" or "that eight AM literature seminar on The Great Gatsby was lit"
4) PMS . . . is an acronym that stands for Pointless Man Speculation . . . e.g. this blog;
5) shipping . . . is the desire to put two people (fictitious or not) in a relationship and I have no idea how to use this one in context . . . apparently it happens in fan-fiction, but I heard it used to describe reality . . . and you can "ship" for people to get together, so-- perhaps-- we were shipping for Mr. Burns and Smithers to finally get together?
1) mansplaining . . . this is when a woman explains something and no one listens, but then a man explains it the same way, but LOUDER and people pay attention;
2) cut a bitch . . . as in "if this shizzle continues I may have to cut a bitch," which indicates that all other methods have been exhausted and the only alternative may be violence . . . I'm not sure if you can substitute "bee-otch" for bitch in this idiom;
3) lit . . . this means "off the hook" or extremely fun and excellent, as in "that party was lit" or "that eight AM literature seminar on The Great Gatsby was lit"
4) PMS . . . is an acronym that stands for Pointless Man Speculation . . . e.g. this blog;
5) shipping . . . is the desire to put two people (fictitious or not) in a relationship and I have no idea how to use this one in context . . . apparently it happens in fan-fiction, but I heard it used to describe reality . . . and you can "ship" for people to get together, so-- perhaps-- we were shipping for Mr. Burns and Smithers to finally get together?
Layers and Layers of Layers
"The Good Wife's Guide," an article in the May 1955 edition of Housekeeping Monthly, has been floating around the internet for many years-- you may have come across it-- but if you haven't, the article features eighteen tips on how to keep your husband happy . . . here are a few telling excerpts:
1) Have dinner ready;
2) Prepare yourself . . . touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair;
7) Prepare the children . . . minimize all noise;
14) Don't complain if he's late for dinner or even if he stays out all night;
16) Arrange his pillow and speak in a low, soothing voice;
17) Remember he is the master of the house;
18) A good wife always knows her place;
and if this advice sounds absurdly chauvinistic and sexist, to the point of being satirical, that's because it is: there's never been a magazine called Housekeeping Monthly and the article is a hoax-- though many people don't know this (including, apparently the history department in my school-- one student of mine said they did a detailed analysis of the article as a historical document and the teacher had no idea that the article is an internet meme) and I think this is because so many people want to believe the article-- liberals want to use it as a document that concretely and definitively shows the oppression of women and their rights and intellect, and conservatives (check the comments on the link to the article, they're excellent) like it because it reminds them of a past that never actually existed . . . while women's rights has come a long way, Lucy's desire for true equality might be a more accurate depiction of the sentiment of the time . . . but what I really wonder about the piece is if it is liberal propaganda or conservative propaganda-- was it created by a feminist to sow discontent or was it created by a conservative with nostalgia for family values . . . or perhaps it was it created by someone with a great sense of humor; after teaching a lesson about these issues yesterday, and using the hoax-article (the kids were properly appalled, and some of them thought the article might be a fake . . . except for the kids who studied it in history class) while I was driving home, I saw a "Republicans for Voldemort" bumper sticker and had exactly the same layered epistemological-ontological thoughts-- was that bumper sticker made by a Democrat for other Democrats, to disparage Republicans, or is it a fun and ironic way to celebrate being a Republican . . . or is Voldemort actually a Democrat, and these Republicans for Voldemort a vocal minority?
Holy Sweet Mother of Nipple Miracles
Everyone who reads this blog is aware that miracles bestow themselves upon me with incredible frequency, and so it will be no surprise that when I walked into the English Office yesterday morning and one of the female teachers-- who will remain nameless-- said to me "That's it! I can see your nipples again! I've been biting my tongue since September, but every morning when you walk in here-- maybe it's cold outside-- but your nipples are hard and poking through your shirt!" and this started a large-scale-nipple-dialogue with the other teachers in the room and we determined that women have to worry about protruding nipples but men do not (someone remarked that the teacher that made the comment about my nipples had thought far more about my nipples than I ever had . . . because men don't worry about their nipples) and this coincidentally tied in to the Susan Sontag essay we were reading in class, called "A Woman's Beauty: Put Down or Power Source," because Sontag claims that beauty is an "obligation" for women and that they are taught see their body in "parts, and to evaluate each part separately . . . breasts, feets, hips, waistline, neck, eyes, nose, complexion, hair, and so" and they need to fretfully and anxiously scrutinize each of these-- and protruding nipples are verboten-- while in men good looks are "taken at a glance" and have to do with the "whole" and so after we read a bit of Twelfth Night, where Olivia expresses the same sentiment, then I showed the class the infamous Mean Girls clip, where Cady learns that there's far more than fat and skinny, and that your hairline can be weird, you can have man shoulders, your nail beds and your calves might suck or your pores might be too large . . . and I had forgotten-- miraculously-- that the scene starts with Regina's mom and her boob job (they're hard as rocks) and her incredibly sharp nipples, that stab Cady . . . bringing the discussion full-circle: a miracle in every way, shape, and form!
Dave Uses His Phone-Camera-Device!
It was 6:30 AM and I had just finished getting dressed for work, but when I passed by my son Ian's room, I noticed he wasn't in his bed-- instead, he was sitting in a laundry basket, ostensibly staring out the window, and since he's usually still sleeping when I leave for work, I wondered if this was a normal early-morning-ritual (he looked very meditative, especially with the early morning sun streaming through the window) and so I asked him if he normally pondered the oncoming day from the comfort of a half-full laundry basket-- which I found rather creepy, especially since it appeared he was going to be sucked into the light (run to the light, Carol Ann!) but it was something much more mundane: the laundry basket happened to be in front of his bookshelf, and he wasn't looking out the window in a contemplative state, he was perusing his collection of books, deciding which to read in bed, because he had woken up so early.
Running Cost-Benefit Poop Analysis
The more intricate the treads are on your fancy running shoes, the more difficult it is to remove the dog poop.
The Test 49: Where Do Bad Folks Go When They Die?
This week on The Test, Stacey challenges Cunningham and I to ponder seven existential questions, and Cunningham decides this is her "most favorite test" and that she wants to discuss these topics exclusively . . . then she promptly forgets the question and thinks she'd like to relinquish control of her free will; Stacey considers spooky stuff and I offer my unadulterated opinion of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and then we out our heads together and figure out the meaning of life (pretty much).
Sports Don't Build Character: They Reveal It
Yesterday, we played a team that slaughtered us 6-0 two weeks ago, and we were missing two of our best players-- both goalies-- so I wasn't particularly hopeful about our chances, but we packed it back and played everything to the outside and my son Ian played goalie in the first half-- he was very excited for this assignment and we went to the field early and trained (because he hadn't played goalie all season) and he played fantastic, and our defense picked up everyone goal-side, and then our other goalie played even better in the second half, but we were taking a beating; they were bigger and faster than us, and had a habit of kicking, tripping, and running us over from behind, and we went down 1-0, even though we were producing lots of chances, and then-- in the second half-- we finally finished one and tied the game and we were excited and pushing hard to score another and my son went down hard -- and this was the second time in the game that he got fouled so hard that he was seriously crying, real tears, and he's a tough kid who generally gets hammered because he dribbles too much and deals with hard fouls every game-- but for the second time one of their players kicked him from behind, this particular time he beat a kid on the dribble and the kid teed off and kicked him in the back of the knee and then kicked him in the head after he went down-- and so I lost my temper, which admittedly should not have happened-- you're supposed to keep your cool in front of the kids-- but the opposing team was consistently hurting my players, so at least I had good reason, and I told the ref and the opposing coaches that their team's behavior was disgraceful and the other team's coaches told me that if my players "stayed on their feet" and stopped "flopping" then there wouldn't be any problem and then things got chippy and ugly and the game ended up a tie, which I thought was a fantastic result, especially since we far outplayed them and there were six or seven totally ugly fouls committed by the opposing side, with no direction to do otherwise by their coaches (despite the fact that whenever my kids foul, my assistant and I pointed out the problem . . . and the last time we played this team, they were equally as rough, but that ref really took charge of the game and told kids what they were doing wrong . . . this ref called some fouls but didn't really take charge) but this is all run-of-the-mill stuff, HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART, the part of the story that made me more and more indignant as the day went on, though I was laughing about it when it happened: after the game, the the player who scored for us-- and I can't impress on you how small this kid is, he's the smallest kid on our team, and we have a small team-- he was shooting around with my son and some other players and the ball rolled behind the goal and the opposing head coach, who was next to his car, about to leave, picked up this little kid's ball-- and the kid was walking toward the coach to get the ball (a new ball he just received a week ago for his 11th birthday) and instead of rolling it back to him, or passing it back to him, or even just leaving it, the head coach picked up the ball and he PUNTED it as far as he could, over the high fence and deep into the dog park . . . and this opposing team hails from the town where I work, a large and fiercely competitive soccer town-- so cheers to the Vultures, your valiant draw made an adult behave like a complete and utter idiot.
Nine Point One Thumbs Up For the New Radiohead Album
A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead's new album, is an easy-listening-electronica-opera, and it manages to sound like a missive from the future, without sounding like sci-fi . . . I love stuff that actually sounds like science-fiction-- The Crystal Method's Vegas and everything by Underworld and The Future Sounds of London and, of course, OK Computer-- but this album is beyond that: it doesn't sound like the present reflecting on how music in the future will sound, and it isn't didactic-- it isn't music that reflects the direction the future is (hypothetically) headed . . . in other words, it doesn't sound anything like Kid A . . . the sounds decay, the lyrics repeat, and every note has some extra production subtly attached to it . . . and if you don't believe me, check out the Pitchfork review . . . I don't know how they come up with the decimal, but they gave it a 9.1 out of a possible 10.
Dogs Like to Eat Cactus?
My dog rarely chews up anything, but when he does, it's alway something special:
1) he chewed up this;
2) and these (but he hasn't done that for a long time)
3) and my Vibram Five Fingers (good riddance)
4) and a live mole, that he flushed out of the snow in Vermont
and most recently, he chewed several pieces off my cactus, but he didn't eat them-- instead he left them in the cushions of the couch . . . I can't wait to see what he chews up next!
1) he chewed up this;
2) and these (but he hasn't done that for a long time)
3) and my Vibram Five Fingers (good riddance)
4) and a live mole, that he flushed out of the snow in Vermont
and most recently, he chewed several pieces off my cactus, but he didn't eat them-- instead he left them in the cushions of the couch . . . I can't wait to see what he chews up next!
Political Paradox of the Week!
American conservatives tend to be against abortion, but they also tend to be against paid-maternity-leave . . . if there's anything upon which bizarro-world candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should debate, it's this bizarro-world American paradox-- America has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, yet we are on the short list (with Oman and Papua New Guinea) of countries which offer no paid-family leave . . . from a logical standpoint, these two policies shouldn't exist in the same country . . . America . . . love it or leave it.
Notes to Future Self
We watched the time-travel movie Primer in philosophy class last week, and while the plot of the movie is close to incomprehensible (although there are plenty of explanations out there on the internet . . . but those are incomprehensible too) the central premise is easy enough to understand; Abe and Aaron keep looping back in time, in a rather short span, and they screw with their future selves-- Chuck Klosterman calls them "ethical Helen Kellers" . . . and this makes a terrible mess of their lives, their relationships, their careers, and their physical well-being; this leads to some mundane questions which we all need to address-- because we are all slowly traveling into the future:
1) how should you ethically behave towards your future self?
2) what do you owe to your future self?
3) are you your future self?
4) is your future self someone else?
and while my philosophy class had a great time with these questions (and my examples . . . Past Dave decided to get a tattoo of a giant lizard ripping out of Past Dave's shoulder . . . he had very little consideration for Future Dave, but-- on the other hand-- Past Dave started diligently practicing the guitar in his twenties and travelled around the world, giving Future Dave some rudimentary musical skills and some vivid memories of the Middle and Far East . . . and so you should realize that when you go for a run, you are helping out your future self, but when you drink a bunch of beer and eat a cheesecake, then not so much) and this finally led us to a very weird place, because the newest findings about human memory conclude that every time we recall something, we alter that memory slightly, and our cells and tissue are dying and being replaced all the time . . . and so our Future Selves really are quite different than our Past Selves-- in a sense they are a person only tangentially related to our Present Selves . . . and so it is difficult to be super-concerned with them, yet we know if we start saving money now, or learning Japanese, then this Future Person might really benefit, and this logic finally leads to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment and the ultimate question: is this Porsche really a Porsche?
1) how should you ethically behave towards your future self?
2) what do you owe to your future self?
3) are you your future self?
4) is your future self someone else?
and while my philosophy class had a great time with these questions (and my examples . . . Past Dave decided to get a tattoo of a giant lizard ripping out of Past Dave's shoulder . . . he had very little consideration for Future Dave, but-- on the other hand-- Past Dave started diligently practicing the guitar in his twenties and travelled around the world, giving Future Dave some rudimentary musical skills and some vivid memories of the Middle and Far East . . . and so you should realize that when you go for a run, you are helping out your future self, but when you drink a bunch of beer and eat a cheesecake, then not so much) and this finally led us to a very weird place, because the newest findings about human memory conclude that every time we recall something, we alter that memory slightly, and our cells and tissue are dying and being replaced all the time . . . and so our Future Selves really are quite different than our Past Selves-- in a sense they are a person only tangentially related to our Present Selves . . . and so it is difficult to be super-concerned with them, yet we know if we start saving money now, or learning Japanese, then this Future Person might really benefit, and this logic finally leads to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment and the ultimate question: is this Porsche really a Porsche?
Double Dipping
I tried my darndest to get a decent (yet discreet) workout at our last faculty meeting-- calf raises, leg lifts, chair dips, wall sits, and lots of plyometrics-- and while it wasn't the most comfortable way to exercise, I was still paying closer attention than the people poking at their cell-phones.
Nocturnal Semantics
The opossum is certainly a synanthrope, but still generally reclusive and nocturnal, and so when the dog and I saw a mottled stiff tailed creature ambling across the road this morning, it took me a second to realize it wasn't a very ugly cat-- and then I wondered what it was doing up at this hour, and if a nocturnal creature is up early in the morning, walking groggily, does that mean it's up early or has it stayed out far too late late?
The Test 48: What Is It Based On?
This week on The Test, we learn that some stuff is based on other stuff, and that stuff might even be based on something else . . . and Cunningham nearly cries and Stacey-- right or wrong-- is nothing but confidence; as a bonus, there is a debate about who is better looking: Tina Fey or me . . . so play at home, keep score, and see if you can do better than "medium."
Interest in Pinterest . . .
I'm going to come clean and admit that last week I went on Pinterest-- several times-- to look at ways to hang planters by a bay window-- ostensibly this "research" was for a Mother's Day project-- but the fact of the matter is that I really enjoyed browsing the indoor plant ideas on the site, and now I want to build a "plant wall" in addition to hanging some plants, so I guess this means I'm transitioning (not that there's anything wrong with that) or maybe I've hit menopause . . . anyway, I'll keep you posted and as soon as the project is done, and I'll put up a picture (maybe I can even put a picture on Pinterest!)
Ian Writes an Ode to Our Dog
My son Ian had to write a "bio" poem for school-- and at first I thought this meant a "biology" poem-- but he told me that didn't make sense . . . although there is a great poem about biology called "Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes," and this is a very short poem so I will insert the entire thing inside this sentence:
Adam/ Had'em
but for this assignment, "Bio" is short for "biography" and Ian chose to write a "bio poem" about our dog Sirius-- and not only is it fabulous (it even contains a pun, of which he is very proud) but it's also exactly one sentence long-- and so I can append it to this rambling run-on:
Sirius the dog
Ingenious,
Talented,
Waggish,
Wishes to have a juicy, chewy, tasty steak waiting for him,
Dreaming to have an elongated beautiful tail that he’s missed since he was abandoned,
Who will never ever run away and if he does he’ll always come back,
Who wants to always help the world around him,
Who wonders if he will ever get some shuteye on the couch with permission,
Who fears flowing water and being abandoned again,
Who likes falling snow, people, and tons and tons of food,
Who believes he can do anything and everything he desires,
Who sees us as a family that cherishes him,
Who adores me, Mom, Dad, Alex, and everyone, except
the evil poodle that lives down the street,
Who plans to live with our family until the world comes to an end,
Sirius, Sirius Black: the bunny dog with a stub for a tail.
TV Stuff Part II
To continue yesterday's thread, the only TV I have been watching is The Office . . . my kids love it and I barely remember it, so we're going through them all-- we are on season three; in between laughing, during the awkward parts, I think most people invariably determine who they are in the office . . . which character on the show is the best parallel of their work behavior-- the first thing you need to do is eliminate Michael Scott (although if you're Michael Scott, then you don't know that you're Michael Scott) and while I can definitely be inappropriate and insensitive at times at work, I'm not as unaware as him and I'm not as dumb, and I'm pretty sure I have real friends and an actual wife and family-- I haven't photoshopped my face over someone's ex-husband so that I appear to be on a ski-trip with her and her kids-- and I hope people respect me a little bit more than they respect Michael Scott . . . and while I wish I were Jim Halpert, because everyone aspires to be Jim Halpert: funny, sensitive, witty, charming, understated, occasionally malevolent, but with a heart of gold, etcetera . . . unfortunately, I'm not him either, in fact-- after some candid self-reflection-- I'm pretty sure people at work see me as Creed (and this isn't even considering the ladies . . . I'm sure lots of women would like to be the Pam, not the Kelly, Phyllis or Angela . . . or -- God forbid-- the Meredith).
Medium Apostrophe
Sometimes I complain that there are too many good TV shows and it's impossible to keep up with everyone's recommendations, but that's not a complaint, it's actually the opposite of a complaint, it's a compliment . . . so great job TV, you've become so excellent you've completely overwhelmed me, to the point where I don't watch you at all.
Dave Gets Smart
I have finally entered the world of the smartphone . . . and it's awesome-- I did it on the cheap: I purchased an older model Samsung Galaxy and put a 64GB memory chip inside it, and I'm using Ting as my service provider and not using any data-- I only download stuff when I'm using wifi-- so the bill is 12 dollars a month (six dollars for the device, three for calling, and three for texting . . . if you want to sign up, refer me and I get some credit) and I'm paying for Google Play music, so I can download anything I want to the phone . . . here's what I have on there so far:
1) Underworld 1992 - 2012;
2) The Black Album Jay-Z;
3) Natasha Leggero Coke Money;
4) Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain;
5) Gorillaz Demon Days;
6) The Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime;
7) Underworld Dubnobasswithmyheadman;
8) Lewis Black The End of the Universe;
9) Wu- Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers;
10) The Crusaders Free as the Wind;
11) John Scofield A Go Go;
12) Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city;
13) Grant Green Green is Beautiful;
14) Deerhunter Halcyon Digest;
15) Squarepusher Hello Everything;
16) Maria Bamford How to Win;
17) Nas Illmatic;
18) Wilco Kicking Television Live;
19) Radiohead Kid A;
20) Spoon Kill the Moonlight;
21) The Pharcyde Labcabincalifornia;
22) Kanye West Late Registration;
23) Kanye West The Life of Pablo;
24) Future Sounds of London Lifeforms;
25) Natasha Leggero Live at Bimbos;
26) Toddy Barry Medium Energy;
27) Massive Attack Mezzanine;
28) Depeche Mode Music for the Masses;
29) John McLaughlin My Goal's Beyond;
30) John Mulaney New in Town;
31) Iggy Pop Raw Power;
32) Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy;
33) The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin;
34) Run the Jewels;
35) Dave Attell Skanks for the Memories;
36) LCD Soundsystem Sounds of Silence;
and a bunch more stuff-- I'm getting sick of listing all this, but the list is heavy on female comics because I'm looking for bits when I teach Ibsen's A Doll's House and it's heavy on hip-hop because I can't listen to that stuff in the house . . . anyway, I'm in audio-overload mode, and I haven't even listed all the podcasts I've subscribed to on Podkicker!
1) Underworld 1992 - 2012;
2) The Black Album Jay-Z;
3) Natasha Leggero Coke Money;
4) Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain;
5) Gorillaz Demon Days;
6) The Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime;
7) Underworld Dubnobasswithmyheadman;
8) Lewis Black The End of the Universe;
9) Wu- Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers;
10) The Crusaders Free as the Wind;
11) John Scofield A Go Go;
12) Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city;
13) Grant Green Green is Beautiful;
14) Deerhunter Halcyon Digest;
15) Squarepusher Hello Everything;
16) Maria Bamford How to Win;
17) Nas Illmatic;
18) Wilco Kicking Television Live;
19) Radiohead Kid A;
20) Spoon Kill the Moonlight;
21) The Pharcyde Labcabincalifornia;
22) Kanye West Late Registration;
23) Kanye West The Life of Pablo;
24) Future Sounds of London Lifeforms;
25) Natasha Leggero Live at Bimbos;
26) Toddy Barry Medium Energy;
27) Massive Attack Mezzanine;
28) Depeche Mode Music for the Masses;
29) John McLaughlin My Goal's Beyond;
30) John Mulaney New in Town;
31) Iggy Pop Raw Power;
32) Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy;
33) The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin;
34) Run the Jewels;
35) Dave Attell Skanks for the Memories;
36) LCD Soundsystem Sounds of Silence;
and a bunch more stuff-- I'm getting sick of listing all this, but the list is heavy on female comics because I'm looking for bits when I teach Ibsen's A Doll's House and it's heavy on hip-hop because I can't listen to that stuff in the house . . . anyway, I'm in audio-overload mode, and I haven't even listed all the podcasts I've subscribed to on Podkicker!
Sears Catalog = internet
I have a friend who sells things on eBay, and not just old stuff-- she'll actually bargain-shop and buy new stuff and then flip it on eBay for profit . . . and while this is a savvy use of markets and technology, it's actually nothing new, just an incremental increase in the accuracy of the "fair market value" of goods for sale in the United States . . . and, according to Robert J. Gordon, in his fantastic and comprehensive new book The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War, the great leap forward in fair pricing and markets happened in the early 1900's-- as did many of the other impossible to reproduce leaps forward in technology-- when the Sears catalog become readily available (and free shipping on the items therein) because then these consumers were armed with pricing information from the catalog, and no longer beholden to the often unfair prices given at general stores-- so the Sears catalog was essentially the internet of its time, an incredibly informative piece of technology, and the concurrent adoption of the car (especially the affordable Model T) allowed people to roam far and wide, in search of fair prices for what they were buying and selling . . . so while my friend is in a sense a "fair market price hero," making the price of goods of services across our country more accurate, allowing someone in backwoods Arkansas to enjoy the low prices of a surplus of goods at a TJ Maxx in densely populated central New Jersey, we're only talking about a slight adjustment (and the convenience of shopping at home) and-- which is the thesis of Gordon's book-- there will never be a leap forward in market information as great as the one created by the innovative, earth-shattering inventions of the early twentieth century-- catalogs, cars, and even city department stores . . . but not having to get in the car to buy stuff is still pretty amazing, whether by internet or Sears catalog.
The Test 47: Opening Lines
This week on The Test, Cunningham quizzes us on the opening lines of seven famous literary works . . . and there's also sitcom nostalgia, ukulele aspirations, and plenty of zombies . . . so give it a shot and see how you do.
Perezoso
I wish I spoke fluent Spanish, but I don't want to take the time to learn . . . is there a Spanish word for that?
Proportionality Bias
I learned the term Proportionality Bias while listening to Benjamen Walker's The Theory of Everything podcast . . . this logical fallacy explains the reason why there are so many conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination: our brain naturally believes that humongous world-shaking events need large, complex causes, and so it couldn't have simply been a lone gunman . . . while John Hinckley's unsuccessful assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan didn't cause as much turmoil-- because Reagan survived and made a prompt recovery-- and so it makes perfect sense that this was the work of a Jody-Foster-obsessed-wack-job . . . logically, we know that a tiny, random event can set a cascading sequence of actions and reactions that could conceivably set an entire city on fire . . . Mrs. Oleary's cow may have kicked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire (or maybe not . . . it may have been started by a meteor shower . . . but either way, I think it proves the point) and the fact of the matter is that a cunning poltergeist did not inhabit your house in the night and wedge your car keys under the sofa, just to watch you scream and howl in the morning because you're going to be late to work . . . but it's much more fun to believe this than the boring, mundane truth.
Every Anxious Wave
If you dig alternative 90's music-- especially The Melvins-- and also enjoy the paradoxes of time travel, then check out Mo Daviau's novel Every Anxious Wave . . . Karl Bender, who was in a popular indie band back in the day, discovers a time-traveling wormhole in his closet, but-- in typical understated ironic hipster fashion-- he will only use the the wormhole to take certain select people back to certain select rock shows . . . we're talking bands like Beat Happening and The Smiths and Frank Zappa and The Magnetic Fields and REM . . . you get the idea . . . but things change when he strands his friend in 980 AD (instead of 1980) and enlists the aid of a cute, obnoxious, chubby astrophysicist to get him back; my favorite trope is that Karl somehow receives text messages from his friend in 980 and emails full of advice from his future self, who is living in a post-apocalyptic version of Seattle . . . and then there's his Indian landlord, a wealthy slumlord married to a beautiful woman, who is actually a closeted homosexual who just wants to get it on with Freddie Mercury in 1982 . . . while this book isn't quite as good as Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, it's certainly in the same ballpark (and it's a lot more fun than Primer).
Serial Season 2: You Should Listen to It (and write an essay about it)
This review is a bit late-- but I loved Serial Season 2, and while I recognize that Serial Season 1 was incredibly compelling because of the solve-it-yourself-mystery and the constant interaction between Sarah Koenig and Adnan, Season 2 is more in my wheelhouse-- Middle Eastern politics, military strategy, assessment of government bureaucracy and hierarchy, the conflict of vision between liberals and conservative, and-- most significantly-- a guy who was indignant because he couldn't wear shorts when it was really hot (same deal where I work, no AC and no relaxation of the dress code when it's 93 degrees in the classroom . . . don't get me started) and, ultimately, a main character who appears one way on the surface: a selfish deserter who-- according to Donald Trump-- deserves to be shot, but when you dig deeper into the story, systemic problems and existential questions reveal themselves . . . anyway, my students wrote synthesis essays about Serial Season 2, Hamlet and Inside Out and they were excellent-- all three works revolve around the question "Who's there?" and they all feature introverted main characters navigating the world without a solid social framework of friends and family . . . and all three characters decide to run away in order to solve their problems; just in case you want to write the essay for your own personal erudition, I've included the prompt AND a sample paragraph I wrote . . . at the very least this will give you an idea of how much high school has changed in the past decade . . . I wish when I went to school that I had the chance to connect a Shakespeare play to a popular podcast and a Pixar film: these damned kids don't know how good they have it.
Who's there?
Use Hamlet, Inside Out, and Serial Season 2 to frame an argument about one or more of the following topics: character, motivation, consciousness, art, aesthetic purpose, ethics, grief, perspective, layers in art, running away, introversion, morals, human nature, action, inaction, family, friendship, political intentions or anything else that applies to these works. These are dense pieces of art that connect to many themes-- so you should be choosing something YOU want to write about.
Use evidence from these works of art to bolster your argument. Do NOT simply summarize and compare/contrast the works, use them to help make your own point. This will require minimal amounts of summary, some logical analysis, transitions and connections, and-- most importantly-- a clear thesis as to what YOU are saying and clear topic sentences that connect to YOUR argument. Your introduction should get across this idea that you are going to explore, explain, and support.
Use at least two quotations from Hamlet, two quotations from Serial, and one quotation from Inside Out. You may mention one of more of the works in the introduction if they connect to your main idea-- but you do not have to mention all the sources in the introduction, you could just blend them into the body paragraphs. Be sure to properly cite all your quotations.
Topic sentence 1: The world does not always conform to idealized rules, and if a person does not learn how to adapt to this concept, he may suffer tragic consequences.
Hamlet believes that his mother and father's marriage was ideal; he cannot endure his mother's betrayal, so much so that he wishes his flesh would "melt" so he that he won't have to deal with the "unweeded garden" (I. ii. 133-139) that his world has become. It takes him too long to accept that his world is messy and ugly, and that he will have to adjust his morals, actions, and attitude to this new normal. Because of this, his life ends tragically. While he finally comes to the conclusion that "the readiness is all" (V. ii. 238) and accepts his fate as an angry and vengeful son, he realizes this too late. Bowe Bergdahl suffers a similar fate. Like Hamlet, he keeps his romanticized ideals intact into his young adulthood. This philosophy does not mesh well with life in the military. In Episode 1 of Serial (DUSTWUN) Bowe likens himself to "Jason Bourne." His interviewer, Mark Boal, describes Bergdahl's aspirations to be a super-soldier. The reality of Bergdahl's military experience is far different than what he imagined. OP MEST was a godforsaken shithole (literally) and the army mission there was ambiguous at best. Bergdahl could not reconcile what he thought the military should be with his actual experience, and this led him to make a rash decision.
Topic Sentence 2: People who learn how to cope with with the instability of the world when they are young are much more likely to be mentally resilient.
Angels Flight is a Funicular Railway and a Harry Bosch Novel
My apologies in advance, as I love the word "funicular" and will use it as many times as possible in this book review; Angels Flight is a two-car-narrow-gauge-funicular-railway in Los Angeles and it connects Hill Street and California Plaza; the funicular-railway is both a tourist attraction and a means for workers to get back and forth between the Downtown Historic Core and Bunker Hill . . . and it is also the title of a particularly dark Michael Connelly novel; the story begins at the funicular-railway, which is the scene of a grisly double murder: a woman and a high profile African American lawyer that specializes in racism and police brutality cases . . . this is a very sensitive investigation and Internal Affairs and the FBI work in conjunction with Bosch's team to solve the case, as many people believe that a police officer committed the crime-- as Howard Elias, the lawyer, was hated and vilified by the force-- this is in the wake of the Rodney King trial, and the city is beginning to boil over again . . . throw in a pedophile ring, a murdered twelve year old girl, complicit parents, violent interrogation tactics and indignant anger in the media, the police force, and the black community, and it sets up an ugly portrait of 1999 that is as topical today as it was then . . . and it all starts on the funicular railway.
The Test 46: What's That Thing Called?
This week on The Test, you've seen it . . . you've used it . . . you even know what it's for . . . but what is it called?
Technology: The Cause of (and Solution to) All of Life's Problems Part Two
While the technological inconvenience of the PARCC test is annoying, and corporate globalization of education is scary, neither of these things is tragic . . . a local event put things into very grim perspective; the beloved school superintendent of a nearby town was struck and killed by a 17 year old high school student . . . he was out for an early morning jog with his dog (also killed) and she was trying to catch a bus for a school trip; the superintendent lives in the town (Robinsville) and his children attend the same school system; the town closed the schools and brought in grief counselors, and the event had a sobering effect on high school students in my district as well . . . there are rumors that the girl may have been texting while she was driving, but these rumors aren't confirmed, and I haven't found a complete account of the accident, but it still opened a great deal of discussion about distracted driving . . . we give our teenagers cars and cell-phones and expect them to be able to responsibly use them, when the technology might be too much for anyone-- teen or adult-- to handle; Leon Neyfakh explains some of the research on this dilemma in an excellent article, and I think the only solution to this nightmare is a technological one: cars that drive themselves, cellphones that sense when you're driving and shut down, and the realization that for most of us, the romance of the open road is a thing of the past and that our cars and phones-- two of the technologies that people use the most-- need to be designed so they operate together, safely and intelligently.
Technology: The Cause of (and Solution to) All of Life's Problems: Part One
New Jersey schools are conducting the PARCC test, and so far it has been a logistical nightmare-- there was a statewide technical breakdown earlier in the week, forcing all schools to postpone an entire day of testing; and the test has made my high school schedule a complete trainwreck, I see the same kids (first and second period) for hours and hours every day, but barely see my other classes . . . I am hoping the frustration and anger over this year's session is the death knell for this test, and that New Jersey severs its relationship with Pearson, the giant multinational company that provides the test . . . this seems to be the trend, as the consortium of states using the PARCC is down to seven; if you want to learn a bit more about Pearson, there's a great article in Wired magazine by Anya Kamentz on this topic; the piece is mainly about Pearson's ambitions to open low-cost private schools around the world, with curriculum based on their Common Core Standards, and while there may be some benefits for developing nations in allowing this-- as it relieves them of the burden of needing to set up an efficient government subsidized free education program-- there are also some Orwellian overtones when a giant profit hungry company hoping to access the 5.5 trillion dollars in global education budgetary money asserts itself . . . here are a few things from the article to think about:
1) last year in New Jersey, Pearson "monitored the social media accounts of students taking its Common Core tests and had state officials call district superintendents to have students disciplined for talking about the exam";
2) outsourcing education to a company like Pearson, who wants to open low-cost schools in small buildings, often without play areas, libraries, or any other typical school amenities (other than computers) may result in making teaching a "low-paid, transient occupation requiring little training" as just about any trained monkey could read the Pearson approved script about the Pearson approved curriculum to the students and then get them workign on their screens, while the computers collect data on their progress;
3) and then-- even scarier-- the only check on student progress "will be the tests that Pearson itself creates" . . . yikes . . . Diane Ravitch has been a proponent of the school as being one of the bastions of local democracy, but if Pearson monopolizes the curriculum, the core standards, and the tests and essentially inserts "itself into the provision of a basic human service, Pearson is subject to neither open democratic decisionmaking nor open market competition" . . .
but I assume people smarter than me are reading the writing on the wall, and I'm sure the Wired article was timed to come out during the testing period and make people aware of some of these big-picture problems (because teachers and students and parents tend to focus on the details, all the little picture stuff: the test makes students lose instructional time, it doesn't need to be on a computer, it's harder to read on a screen, it's difficult to schedule a test where everyone needs to use a computer, kids do enough testing during the course of a year, I was with the same kids for three hours Friday, then my break was cut to ten minutes, then I had a bunch of short classes and no lunch . . . I was so bewildered that I actually forgot to eat my lunch, which has never happened in my twenty years of teaching . . . etcetera) and the fact of the matter is that even if we solve all this little logistical details, and I remember to eat my lunch, it's still very scary to entrust the standards, the curriculum, and the measurement of progress to a large corporation that's not under direction from the local school board and town . . . I think most parents will agree that we can't accurately measure what is important in education-- teachers and curriculum and schools that inspire curiosity, sensitivity, social skills, passion, diligence, and perseverance-- so we make what we can measure important . . . or we let Pearson dictate what is important and then we let Pearson design instruments to measure this: yuck.
1) last year in New Jersey, Pearson "monitored the social media accounts of students taking its Common Core tests and had state officials call district superintendents to have students disciplined for talking about the exam";
2) outsourcing education to a company like Pearson, who wants to open low-cost schools in small buildings, often without play areas, libraries, or any other typical school amenities (other than computers) may result in making teaching a "low-paid, transient occupation requiring little training" as just about any trained monkey could read the Pearson approved script about the Pearson approved curriculum to the students and then get them workign on their screens, while the computers collect data on their progress;
3) and then-- even scarier-- the only check on student progress "will be the tests that Pearson itself creates" . . . yikes . . . Diane Ravitch has been a proponent of the school as being one of the bastions of local democracy, but if Pearson monopolizes the curriculum, the core standards, and the tests and essentially inserts "itself into the provision of a basic human service, Pearson is subject to neither open democratic decisionmaking nor open market competition" . . .
but I assume people smarter than me are reading the writing on the wall, and I'm sure the Wired article was timed to come out during the testing period and make people aware of some of these big-picture problems (because teachers and students and parents tend to focus on the details, all the little picture stuff: the test makes students lose instructional time, it doesn't need to be on a computer, it's harder to read on a screen, it's difficult to schedule a test where everyone needs to use a computer, kids do enough testing during the course of a year, I was with the same kids for three hours Friday, then my break was cut to ten minutes, then I had a bunch of short classes and no lunch . . . I was so bewildered that I actually forgot to eat my lunch, which has never happened in my twenty years of teaching . . . etcetera) and the fact of the matter is that even if we solve all this little logistical details, and I remember to eat my lunch, it's still very scary to entrust the standards, the curriculum, and the measurement of progress to a large corporation that's not under direction from the local school board and town . . . I think most parents will agree that we can't accurately measure what is important in education-- teachers and curriculum and schools that inspire curiosity, sensitivity, social skills, passion, diligence, and perseverance-- so we make what we can measure important . . . or we let Pearson dictate what is important and then we let Pearson design instruments to measure this: yuck.
Juggling isn't Just for Clowns
Our varsity soccer coach made us juggle the ball at nearly every practice, despite our complaints-- you never juggle the ball in the game! no one ever juggles down the field and then scores!-- but he was ahead of his time and a fantastic coach (and recognized as such by North Brunswick star Tim Howard) and I've managed to convince my own children how important juggling the ball is and this has finally paid off-- because when kids first start juggling the ball, it's pretty ugly, they don't have much success and the ball goes flying all over the place . . . so we do it off the bounce a lot at practice; my older son Alex is twelve and he's finally mastered the two footed juggle . . . two weeks ago his high score was 25 touches in a row without letting the ball hit the ground, but now he's up to 97 and he's making it look easy because he can use both his feet with equal facility; now that he's achieved some success, he's getting slightly obsessed with it and practicing every day (and this may be in the genes, I used to juggle the ball a lot for relaxation and exercise . . . I once did 13 soccer fields without dropping the ball and another time I made it a mile around the track without letting the ball hit the rubber . . . after that I stopped juggling so incessantly because it was getting a bit weird, but I wish someone stressed earlier than high school how important juggling the ball is to develop balance and first touch).
Cooperation vs. Competition
While I love competition, I love it in particular forums (darts, cornhole, basketball, soccer, pedantry, stealing rocks from the park, miracles) and I readily acknowledge that the bulk of human interaction is cooperative-- in fact, nearly everything I do in the course of a day is a cooperative venture: driving on the highway, walking in a crowded space, holding a discussion in class, coming up with a new lesson plan, having a laugh in the office, running soccer practice, cooking dinner, dealing with the kids, and even watching TV (I only watch TV with other people, and I make a lot of comments and ask a lot of questions) and this makes me wonder about the actual benefits of competition-- while it's certainly fun, I'm not sure if it's all that significant for our species, as we are at the core, social animals; conservatives claim to love the unfettered competition in capitalism because they insist that it produces excellent results, but I wonder how many of these folks that espouse this philosophy have ever played competitive sports . . . because anyone who is competitive and has participated in competitive sports knows that the referees and umpires and officials and rules and regulations are VERY important because people tend to act fairly berserk when they are competing, which leads me to believe that competition is NOT our natural state (which is why we need yellow cards and personal fouls and the penalty box and the Geneva Conventions) and also leads me to believe that we either need to adopt a different metaphor for our economic system (and a different culture to go along with that new metaphor) or we need regulations in capitalism that allow for stronger penalties and even ejection from tha game.
Far Post > Near Post
I decided that it was time to teach my players that good things happen when you shoot and cross the ball to the far post, and while this is definitely true (it's how we scored one of our goals on Sunday) I must admit that when you try to teach a bunch of ten year olds how to do this, it's not all good . . . because teaching ten year olds anything new is very, very bad for my patience.
Habits are Powerful
I highly recommend The Power of Habit:Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg-- it's Malcolm-Gladwell-meets-self-help-- and not only does he make good on his promise in the subtitle, but he does it in an entertaining, breezy style (with graphics!) that belies the rather disturbing hypothesis: our consciousness is mainly a bundle of cues, routines, and rewards; this is the same ground that Aristotle tread a couple thousand of years ago-- the only way towards virtue is habitual action and revision of this action towards a golden mean-- and Marvin Minsky's Society of the Mind is applicable as well; anyway, the thrust of the book is that you can't quit habits cold-turkey, you need to replace the routine or the reward with something comparable, and you need to BELIEVE you can change-- because reestablishing these routines and rewards is HARD . . . people do stop drinking and smoking every day, but not without many relapses and difficulty . . . you have to figure out an adequate replacement for the routine and reward when the cue arises; it also seems there are certain keystone habits that are crucial to changing everything, habits that cascade into other habits; Paul O'Neill realized this when he took over Alcoa and so he focused on one thing: employee safety, and vigilance in that one area caused a domino effect that changed the culture of the entire company; anyway, I've been nicotine free since the summer, and this book made me realize how I did it; I only crave chewing tobacco when I'm out past my bedtime and need sleep, and so now when I want to dip, I go home and go to sleep.
Dave's Take on East Coast Comicon
If you've never been to Comicon, I can save you the trouble: imagine the Route 1 Flea Market (the one in Kevin Smith's movie Mallrats) inside a warehouse--but remove the delicious barrel pickles and the arcade-- and now add a bunch of ersatz superheroes and a few stormtroopers; while I found this to be a bit over-stimulating, my children and their two friends loved it, and they all swear they are going to next year's event in costumes . . . and I guess if you're a kid, what's not to love: there's comic books, plastic junk, toys, weapons, posters, merch, and lots of adults dressed as Deadpool; for those of you hoping to make a pilgrimage, the Route 1 Flea Market is long gone, it was razed twenty years ago and replaced by a movie multiplex, and this multiplex often features movies about superheroes . . . but in the movies, the superheroes never seem to hang around en masse in flea markets.
The Test 45: Borderline Insanity
I don't say this often, but you must listen to this week's episode of The Test; in fact, I am giving it Dave's Coveted Platinum-Clad Guarantee of High Quality Fun and Educational Value . . . the premise is a simple one, and I won't give it away (since I introduce the concept with a musical riddle) and the ladies perform heroically, admirably, and humorously (but not knowledgeably) so give it a shot, and don't worry if you fail, because if you're listening to The Test, that means you are still alive and breathing, and that's a good thing.
Applying Things to Other Things
On Thursday in composition class, we listened to an excerpt of Freakonomics about skepticism and critical analysis (The Truth is Out There . . . Isn't It?) and in it-- 17 minutes in, if you want to listen-- a professional skeptic summarized the concept of a Type 1 Cognitive Error-- this is a false positive, and in an evolutionary sense, it's not a bad mistake to make . . . you're a hominid on the plains and you hear a rustle in the grass and even though it might be a squirrel or the wind, you err on the side of caution and head back to your cave-- because that rustle might be a saber-toothed tiger and even though it probably wasn't, by making this error, you survived to see another dawn . . . we humans are designed to make lots of these errors, because they aren't very costly (as opposed to a Type 2 Cognitive Error, where you think the reverse and decide that that rustle in the grass is probably nothing-- because it's usually nothing-- and then you get eaten . . . think about this in modern terms with an electrical socket: better to assume it's live, than actually stick a fork in it to check) and later in the day on Thursday, when I was at the high school turf for soccer practice, and I ran into a mom that I thought was someone I knew (but wasn't quite sure because she was out of context) and realized that I had possibly just sent this person an email about when I was going to pick up her son-- if it was the mom I knew-- and while I wasn't sure it was her, I instinctively knew that it was much less costly to make a Type 1 Error and say hello and tell her that I had sent her an email-- and if she turned out to be someone else, all I would suffer would be a moment of awkwardness-- but if I ignored her and she was the kid's mom, then I would come off as very rude and weird, so I addressed her and she was the person I thought she was and the interaction went as well as it could have (though I couldn't remember her name) and so I'd just like to thank the evolutionary processes that shaped my pattern seeking brain and its ability to suffer through so many Type 1 Cognitive Errors (and I'd like to apologize to all you people that I started waving at, but then-- mid-wave-- realized I didn't actually know you and so started weirdly scratching my head . . . because it's better to wave at a stranger then ignore one of your friends or acquaintances).
Caveat Chapin
The radio station should warn you before playing Harry Chapin's song "Cat's in the Cradle" -- there's are times when you don't need to be that unexpectedly reflective and maudlin (plus, I'm taking both my sons and a couple of their friends to Comicon tomorrow, so that should get me a lifetime pass from ever having to hear those lyrics again).
45.4% and 99%
If you're excited and astounded by the margin Stephen Curry broke his own three point record (402 three pointers this year, vs. 286 last year . . . so nearly a thirty percent increase . . . I think this may be one of those unbreakable records, like Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak) then you'll enjoy listening to "The Yin and Yang of Basketball," a 99% Invisible episode that describes the evolution of the game, from James Naismith's arbitrary decision to nail the peach baskets up at the ten foot mark to the attempts in the '70's to change the game, which had become ponderous and boring and mainly consisted of big men inching closer and closer to the basket to score; while many ideas were batted around to solve the problem: "no backboard, a convex backboard, a smaller basket, a bigger ball, a smaller ball, a no scoring zone around the basket, and even a height cap, which would work like a team salary cap but using a player's height instead of wages," it was the ABA's adoption of the three-pointer that changed the aesthetics of the game and made last night's impossibe and unsurpassable record possible.
A Review of Some Key Moments in the Film Better Off Dead
One of the joys of having children is forcing them to watch movies from your youth; Saturday night we ate tacos and the entire family enjoyed a screening of Better Off Dead, and while everyone remembers the deranged paperboy who wants his two dollars and the hamburger singing Van Halen's "Everybody Wants Some," this movie has a lot more to it than those scenes and it is much weirder than I remembered . . . here are some moments you might have forgotten:
1. Ricky's mom drinks primer and blows up;
2. the Asian brothers with a PA system mounted in their car;
3. one of the Asian brothers is mute, the other speake like Howard Cosell;
4. Lane tries to commit suicide multiple times;
5. Lane's eight year old brother learns to pick up "trashy women" from a book;
6. Lane's eight year old brother builds a space shuttle from household parts, and it works;
7. Lane transforms from a klutz to a ski-pro in the span of a musical montage;
8. Lane's car transforms from a two hundred dollar heap of junk to a perfectly restored 1967 Camaro SS with a shiny paint job, also in the span of a musical montage;
9. Monique the French exchange student next door is both an an ace mechanic and a professional ski-instructor;
10. Ricky and Lane duel with ski-poles over Monique the French-exchange student;
11. Ricky's mom creates a living slime mold when she botches a recipe, she also cooks a stew that contains a very large living crustacean and has waving cephalopod tentacles;
12. though Monique can actually speak English-- a fact she has hidden from Ricky and his mom-- she substitutes "testicles" for the word "tentacles";
13. Charles de Mar (Curtis Armstrong) wears a top hat the entire movie and-- in an attempt to get high-- snorts both jello and snow;
14. at the end of the movie, Lane and Monique somehow drive the perfectly restored Camaro into Dodger stadium, park it on home plate, and make-out (the stadium is empty and Lane has his saxophone).
1. Ricky's mom drinks primer and blows up;
2. the Asian brothers with a PA system mounted in their car;
3. one of the Asian brothers is mute, the other speake like Howard Cosell;
4. Lane tries to commit suicide multiple times;
5. Lane's eight year old brother learns to pick up "trashy women" from a book;
6. Lane's eight year old brother builds a space shuttle from household parts, and it works;
7. Lane transforms from a klutz to a ski-pro in the span of a musical montage;
8. Lane's car transforms from a two hundred dollar heap of junk to a perfectly restored 1967 Camaro SS with a shiny paint job, also in the span of a musical montage;
9. Monique the French exchange student next door is both an an ace mechanic and a professional ski-instructor;
10. Ricky and Lane duel with ski-poles over Monique the French-exchange student;
11. Ricky's mom creates a living slime mold when she botches a recipe, she also cooks a stew that contains a very large living crustacean and has waving cephalopod tentacles;
12. though Monique can actually speak English-- a fact she has hidden from Ricky and his mom-- she substitutes "testicles" for the word "tentacles";
13. Charles de Mar (Curtis Armstrong) wears a top hat the entire movie and-- in an attempt to get high-- snorts both jello and snow;
14. at the end of the movie, Lane and Monique somehow drive the perfectly restored Camaro into Dodger stadium, park it on home plate, and make-out (the stadium is empty and Lane has his saxophone).
Plastic Fantastic Anaphora
I have a dream . . . I have a dream that one day in my kitchen cabinet there will only be one brand of plastic container . . . I have a dream that there will be only one brand of plastic container and whichever lid that I choose will fit any container that I choose-- of the proper shape-- I'm not an idiot . . . I have a dream that I will no longer waste my time searching for the correct brand of lid-- Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Ziploc, Sterilite, Gladware-- to fit the proper brand of container . . . I have a dream to streamline and expedite our plastic container cabinet. . . but when I told my family about this dream, my oldest son said, "Dad, that's the saddest dream I've ever heard."
Fight the Power
I urge you to listen to the 99 Percent Invisible episode "Flying Food"; it describes the relatively recent history of food advertising, and how innovators learned to make food look incredibly appealing-- to make food a delicious and dynamic subject that actually produces a visceral cravings in viewers-- but the important thing to remember, if you don't want to start salivating for burgers and fries every time you watch TV (because we eat WAY too much meat . . . for more on that topic, watch this TED talk by Times food writer Mark Bittman) then you need to remember that the actor who takes a bite out of the perfectly prepared burger and makes that orgasmically satisfied face, probably did that sixty-four times-- until he got the face just right-- and all the times previous, he spit the half chewed bite of burger and bun into a bucket-- the infamous spit bucket-- and if you can think of this image every time you see a delicious food image on TV, the image of the actor spitting a half-chewed bit of that burger or rib or donut into the spit bucket next to the set, a metal bucket slowing filling with half-digested chunks of meat and bread, covered in saliva-- then you are short-circuiting a habit routine . . . and to learn about this, read Charles Duhigg's book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business; you'll learn how to change the middle portion of the cue/routine/reward subroutines that are happening all the time in our lives; in this particular instance, you'll get the same cue-- a commercial with delicious looking food-- but you will go into a different routine, where you talk graphically about the spit bucket with whoever is in the room, and the reward will be that you don't salivate and desire the unhealthy food, but instead share a trade secret that might help others fight the power of this advertising as well (but you'll actually probably come off as a righteous pedant, which is what Dave is all about).
The Test 44: More Shows!
If there's one thing that Stacey and I have learned while making forty-plus episodes of The Test, it's that Cunningham loves shows and knows her shows . . . so give this one a shot, try to identify the TV Theme Songs, listen to Stacey sing, absorb Cunningham's wisdom on what to watch, and see how discerning your ears are . . . because while these shows are popular, their theme songs are tough to identify out-of-context.
An Open Letter to US Youth Soccer:
Dear US Youth Soccer,
While I recognize this as a "first world problem," your top-down bureaucratic decision to align US Youth soccer with the rest of the world, and switch from school year age ranges to calendar year age ranges is an arbitrary pain-in-my-ass (are you also going to dictate that we use the metric system?) and while this change could have been implemented with the youngest teams, and you could have "grandfathered" the older teams, instead you are tearing apart every team, everywhere; in larger towns, this isn't as much of a problem, as they have more participants and so it is easier to do a complete reset and conduct new try-outs, but this dictate truly punishes the small town coaches who have cobbled together competitive teams and now have to either play them "up" a year, which isn't good for anybody-- especially my team, which is generally undersized to begin with-- or send some kids packing (who probably won't have another place to go) and so while I recognize that you want to align yourself with international soccer as far as small sided training, which is beneficial to players, I don't understand why shifting age ranges is going to benefit any player in particular, and it is certainly going to hurt a number of teams, and give a number of volunteer travel coaches a huge headache . . . in fact, I'd far prefer adopting the metric system to dealing with the logistics of this; perhaps you will reconsider . . .
Irately,
Dave.
While I recognize this as a "first world problem," your top-down bureaucratic decision to align US Youth soccer with the rest of the world, and switch from school year age ranges to calendar year age ranges is an arbitrary pain-in-my-ass (are you also going to dictate that we use the metric system?) and while this change could have been implemented with the youngest teams, and you could have "grandfathered" the older teams, instead you are tearing apart every team, everywhere; in larger towns, this isn't as much of a problem, as they have more participants and so it is easier to do a complete reset and conduct new try-outs, but this dictate truly punishes the small town coaches who have cobbled together competitive teams and now have to either play them "up" a year, which isn't good for anybody-- especially my team, which is generally undersized to begin with-- or send some kids packing (who probably won't have another place to go) and so while I recognize that you want to align yourself with international soccer as far as small sided training, which is beneficial to players, I don't understand why shifting age ranges is going to benefit any player in particular, and it is certainly going to hurt a number of teams, and give a number of volunteer travel coaches a huge headache . . . in fact, I'd far prefer adopting the metric system to dealing with the logistics of this; perhaps you will reconsider . . .
Irately,
Dave.
History Repeats Itself (to Dave's Chagrin)
I was walking the dog this morning in the predawn darkness--staring at the sidewalk, thinking my early morning thoughts about the day-- and then my arm was suddenly horizontal, my dog lunging violently at something . . . but I was able to hold the leash and keep him from chasing whatever it was he wanted to chase . . . it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the lack of light, and then I saw that we nearly walked into a deer-- it was a few feet away and staring at us, not moving at all-- so I pulled Sirius to the other side of the street and kept my eyes peeled for more deer; after a few minutes, I lapsed back into my own head, and that's when Sirius lunged and barked again-- scaring the crap out of me again -- and this time the deer was above my head, on the lawn of my friend's front yard, which is seven feet or so above the sidewalk; the moral to the story is this: at least it wasn't a skunk.
Learning Stuff the Old Fashioned Way
Each morning during the homeroom video announcements at my high school, there is an introductory snippet of a song-- and it's different every day and it's usually a rock song and it's usually from the '90's and I can usually identify it, but the musical fragment from Tuesday eluded me . . . the only lyrics I could make out were "naa naa na na na na naaa" and while I knew the song and knew it was an alternative rock song from my era, I couldn't identify the artist or the title, and-- despite enlisting the aid of the internet and my honors Philosophy class-- there was no figuring it out . . . I will warn you that it's an internet black hole if you Google songs with "na na na" in the lyrics, and so I had to give up and do it the old-fashioned way (remember the old-fashioned way? if you didn't know the name of the guy that had a cameo in the movie, then you had to wait until you ran into your friend who knew all about movies and ask him) and so when I saw the teacher that runs the produces the morning announcements in the hallway, I went up to him and asked him if he knew the song, and he did . . . so take your guess and then follow the link to find out if you're right.
Robots vs. Selfish Drunk People
I recently watched the movie Ex Machina, and I loved it-- especially the "villain," a super-intelligent, super-rich, super-selfish tech wizard who spends his time drunk and alone on his giant estate, building strong AI robots-- which look like beautiful women, of course; I also just finished Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder-- the novel doesn't really contain a villain, per se, unless it's nostalgia for the affected British upper class and all their traditions and foibles . . . but it does contain lots of drunken selfish people and serves as a reminder that there's nothing all that recent (the book was published in 1945) about misdirected intelligence, ethical egoism, louche sensibility, and a general malaise with existing society and morals-- a desire to throw away everything previous and move into a new era, even if it is a rank and gross one-- and the haunting grip that the previous has on the present; I recommend both the book and the movie, they are smart, fun, thought-provoking, and weird.
If You Can Measure It, Then You Will Care About It
I'm not sure where I first heard the sentiment "we can't measure what we care about, so we care about what we can measure" and when I Googled the quotation I found several places where it might have originated-- but it sounds like one of those things that is impossible to pinpoint; anyway, I think it applies to both education and sports, and I'm going to keep it in mind as a teacher and a coach, and I think you should keep it in mind as well (in fact, there will be a quiz on this quotation in seven years time).
The Test 43: Dave Speaks for the Trees
This week on The Test, I speak for the trees . . . because if I don't speak for the trees, who will?
How Do YOU Spell the "C" Word?
Thursday in the English Department, lines were drawn, alliances were formed, vitriol was spewed, judgments (judgements?) were made, umbrage was taken, and words were exchanged that may never be forgotten . . . the vociferous and combative debate centered around how to spell the "c" word, not the profane one, the one synonymous with lousy, and so your choices were:
A. crummy
B. crumby
and nearly the entire department agreed that the proper spelling is "crumby," but there were two dissenters-- Kevin and myself-- and I pointed out to the Crumby Camp that the dissenters happened to be the only two red-blooded American male coaches in department-- besides Terry, and no one asked his opinion on this-- and that the Crumby Crew were a bunch of effete, British literature loving Anglophiles (the type of people who like to go to the theatre and pronounce judgement on the colours of the costumes) and it turns out that Kevin and I were correct, of course-- crummy is the proper spelling, although "crumby" was fine in 19th century England . . . which only fortifies our position, since we reside in New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen would never say "I'm pulling out of this crumby town."
A. crummy
B. crumby
and nearly the entire department agreed that the proper spelling is "crumby," but there were two dissenters-- Kevin and myself-- and I pointed out to the Crumby Camp that the dissenters happened to be the only two red-blooded American male coaches in department-- besides Terry, and no one asked his opinion on this-- and that the Crumby Crew were a bunch of effete, British literature loving Anglophiles (the type of people who like to go to the theatre and pronounce judgement on the colours of the costumes) and it turns out that Kevin and I were correct, of course-- crummy is the proper spelling, although "crumby" was fine in 19th century England . . . which only fortifies our position, since we reside in New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen would never say "I'm pulling out of this crumby town."
Three Thousand Words
I am usually articulate enough to portray The Life of Dave with words alone, but sometimes only photographs will do the trick:
1) one of the few surviving photos from our hike up Glen Onoko Falls;
2) the spot that I mistook for the men's locker room;
3) a photo of our very tired dog after our very long hike to the Hickory Run Boulder Field . . . normally he would never deign to such humiliation.
1) one of the few surviving photos from our hike up Glen Onoko Falls;
3) a photo of our very tired dog after our very long hike to the Hickory Run Boulder Field . . . normally he would never deign to such humiliation.
T Junctions
Charlie Jane Ander's novel genre-mash-up novel All the Birds in the Sky uses the love affair between a witch and a techno-geek as a metaphor to pit science against magic . . . and while the book has its moments, it's ponderous at times-- the writing is vivid, but I didn't particularly care for the characters; the book does portray earth at an interesting T Junction: the scientists are abandoning ship while the more mystical folks are trying to find a way to save what's left of everything on earth-- not just the humans-- and this portion of the metaphor rings very true, with the presidential election looming and two roads diverging in the yellow wood for our country and the world to travel . . . a slightly less vivid and rather technical (but sort of readable) economic explanation of this is presented by Mohamed A. El-Erian in his book The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse . . . he believes that central banks functioned as critical policy actors, and while they fell asleep at the wheel before 2008, they actually steered us away from total financial collapse . . . but they can't keep it up, and if we don't change political and institutional policies we could be headed down a path of "lost generations, worsening inequality, spreading poverty and political extremism" but if political and financial policy follows some simple guidelines, and there is stronger "multilateral policy coordination" then the "second road of the T junction" leads to much better economic and social outcomes . . . I'm not going to pretend I understood everything in the book, but I did like his ending analogy that incorporated the Ali/Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" fight and the two possible outcomes predicted by the Ali camp and subsequent training strategies . . . this I understood; rather than read the book, if I were you, I would listen to El-Erian discuss the premise on Slate Money . . . he gives a clear synopsis and you might get hooked on the show, which is generally a lot of fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)