grab your ektachrome

Want to protest this previously-mentioned idiocy? Head over here, read, and make plans to show the boobocracy who's really in charge.

[thanks again to PZ Myers over at Pharyngula]

children left behind

Leslie Baldacci, Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
Give up a cushy job to teach in Chicago's South Side? You'd have to be crazy. Or, you'd have to be Leslie Baldacci. It's not a self-congratulatory memoir; it is, rather, a frank, brutal record of what's wrong with urban (translation: inner-city) education, what's misguided about political reform, and what's wrong with standardized testing. Hint: it's not the kids.

I touched on the insensitivity of assumptions when I faced the bean-counters who defend standardized test scores like they are the holy grail. They, same as most policy-makers, like things to fit in neat little boxes. Wrapping themselves in comfortable assumptions makes it easier to defend their hard and fast policies.

I told them the story of one kid, a fair student, who had tanked the Iowa test the year before. On test day, he took the garbage out before school and found a dead body in the alley. His mother sent him to school after he finished talking to the police.... Try as we might to consider the conditions that children come from before they pass through our doors, we cannot anticipate everything and therefore should not assume anything.

Oh, and if you figured eventually Baldacci would go back to her old job, refreshed and reinvigorated from her field trip into the South Side, you're wrong. She's still teaching.

dontcha make me repeat it

For those who feared the galaxy was going to be vacuumed up by voracious black holes, rest easy: maybe they're not quite as all-consuming as we--we being Stephen Hawking, Superman himself--once thought.

Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world.

In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think you have to say the jury is still out."

We--we being me--will post an update as soon as a verdict is entered.

well, not exactly everything

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness
A "dictionnarrative!" I can't say I was swept up in the sort of fervor that made Constance Hale "shiver with glee," but I was pleasantly surprised by the erudition and poetry in Gordon's slender volume. (I suppose I should have read the many prequels.) Tongue-tripping and intellectual--what's the difference between complacent and complaisant?--and altogether good fun. A sample quotation:

The horizon greeted us with a baleful rumble of louring coruscations as we dreaded our way along the precipitous switchbacks of Upper Trajikistan.

Say it out loud; try, though, to avoid spitting on your keyboard.

Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything
And now, to the real deal, a true dictionnarrative--the story of the fabled Oxford English Dictionary (which, as the author notes, might have been published at Cambridge if history had taken a different turn). Winchester's deft prose conveys his utter enthusiasm for all things nerdy. (When I was young, I was accused of "reading the dictionary;" if we'd had an OED in the house, I'm sure I would have.)

An example of Winchester's over-the-top ardor:

These were essential: the millions of words from these quotations offer up countless examples of exactly how the language worked over the centuries of its employment, and by their use they mark the OED out as the finest dictionary ever made in any language, and made, as it happens, of the language that is the most important in the world, and probably will be for all time.

I suppose the Greeks thought the same thing about Greek, and heaven knows the Romans were quite fond of Latin. For the future, my money's on Asia; the global balance of power will shift toward China and India in the next two decades. You heard it here first.

The Life of Young George W.

Billy Liar
Oh, the vagaries of the bourgeoisie. Brilliant opening montage--apartment complexes, town houses, duplexes, all indistinguishable--as a radio announcer calls out song title requests for equally indistinguishable English housewives. (On the commentary track, director John Schlesinger notes that the premiere audience applauded the opener; he and his crew were "very chuffed and happy.")

The title character escapes drudgery through Walter Mitty-like daydreams about his own made-up country, Ambrosia. Will he literally escape his bleak suburban existence? I won't spoil the end. (Neither the commentary nor the liner notes mention "Walter Mitty." Is this a glaring oversight? A tacit denial of plagiarism? The influence is too obvious to be glossed over--even though Billy Liar is a far superior film.)

Plenty of memorable moments:
Flushing stolen ad calendars for an undertaking company. Bagpipes at a shopping center's grand opening. Passion pills. Plastic coffins--the wave of the future. "I'm not ordinary folk, even if she is." "We don't buy calendars just so you can chuck them on the fire, you know." "Then there's his library books--we'll have them to take back."

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
Praise be to Dover for their cheap reprints (paperback, of course) of classics old and modern. Bridging the divide is Ibsen's once-scandalous A Doll's House, the 19th century women's lib shocker. Nora supports hubby Torvald through a difficult financial scrape by taking a loan from Krogstad, the unscrupulous former lover of forgotten widow Christine. Her scheme backfires, but Christine gets back with Krogstad and convinces him to cancel Nora's debt. When hubby finds out, his righteous indignation leads Nora to realize she's just his doll; in a final scene exactly opposite Gone With the Wind, Torvald's left mumbling, "The most wonderful thing of all?--" as Nora flounces out the door.

Oh, and by the way, this is my 100th post. Self-congratulation all around.

how much is a Ph.D. worth, anyway?

Plagiarism is not just the scourge of harried high school teachers.

Clearly they think it was outrageous that Mr. X plagiarized my work. But they do not yet see that Mr. X got away with what he did precisely because he did not have a professor who checked all of his sources. They do not yet see that I check their sources so that I can teach them a skill and a principle that could keep them from someday losing a degree, a job, or a reputation.

Think the last sentence is overstatement? Read the article. It's not.

less magic; more realism

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Collected Novellas [more specifically, Chronicle of a Death Foretold]

It takes a master craftsman to create suspense out of inevitability. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez does just that. Thanks to the Citizen Kane-like reportage, you know all the while that the protagonist, Santiago Nasar, is going to die; you even know who will kill him--or, more accurately, who has killed him. And yet you are still breathless when he is murdered gruesomely, shockingly, humorously. It's like being punched in the gut while laughing.

...and yet they thought that Santiago Nasar would never fall.... Trying to finish it once and for all, Pedro Vicario sought his heart, but he looked for it almost in the armpit, where pigs have it. Actually, Santiago Nasar wasn't falling because they themselves were holding him up with stabs against the door.

Up next: A Doll's House.

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die

Albert Camus, The Stranger
Who's more American--Johnny Cash or Albert Camus?

Read The Stranger not to be moved, or to be unmoved, but because you can. Be gripped by its sparing, simple prose (see below). Or, let the waves of anticlimax wash over you; merely bob on the surface, floating in "gentle indifference." The choice is yours.

I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?

Matthew Ward, in the prefatory note, justifies the Hemingwayesque, crime-novel style of the translation:

Camus acknowledged employing an "American method" in writing The Stranger, in the first half of the book in particular: the short, precise sentences; the depcition of a character ostensibly without consciousness; and, in places, the "tough guy" tone.... In addition to giving the text a more "American" quality, I have also attempted to venture farther into the letter of Camus's novel, to capture what he said and how he said it, not what he meant. In theory, the latter should take care of itself.

The simplicity, though, masks a complex moral anti-drama; for Meursault, the protagonist, events merge seamlessly into each other. He is an observer, objective, detached from his own existence--even killing a complete stranger without reason or remorse--but only when condemned does he realize his beliefs about death and life are illusions.

... everything was very simple: the guillotine is on the same level as the man approaching it. He walks up to it the way you walk up to another person. That bothered me too. Mounting the scaffold, going right up into the sky, was something the imagination could hold on to. Whereas, once again, the machine destroyed everything: you were killed discreetly, with a little shame and with great precision....

Then, in the dark hour before dawn, sirens blasted. They were announcing departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me... For everything to be comsummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

The allusion is obvious, violently and ironically inverting the crucifixion. So much for the promise of future glory, so much for the hope of suffering through a world that is not "home."

I find it instructive to read the one-star reviews on Amazon. They give you the true sense of the book--its capacity to shock, to infuriate, to baffle, even years after The Stranger has become a near-cliche.

Don't Even Waste Your Time, January 12, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Cincinnati, OH USA
If you are looking for a book to put you to sleep, look no further. Here it is. This is the most pathetic book I have ever read. And not only was the book boring, the main character, Meursault, was an emotionless, hopless, and disgusting human being. His views on women and relationships are no less than vile. He does not even remorse over the death of his mother. He then says that he no emotional attachment to Marie, the lady that he is sexually active with. Thankfully, he commits a cold blooded murder and is put to death. And at his execution, he says that he wishes there be "howls of execration." It is amazing to me that an individual can want there to be people cursing him on the day of his death. Bottom line, this is not woth the time for you to sit down and read it. [this refers to the original British translation]

Disappointing, June 24, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Boston, MA United States
I'll keep this short. The book was an awful read save the last ten pages. Everything before that is terribly uninteresting. It is only once he has been sentenced and awaits his end that it becomes something worth flipping through. I have the utmost respect for Albert Camus, but this is dribble.

A horrible translation, March 29, 2002
Reviewer: Meg from Boston, MA
I have read a previous translation of The Stranger, and was deeply moved. My entire life was changed. The previous translator did Camus justice. Matthew Ward, with this translation of The Stranger, ruined the novel. Ward includes awful cliche and unintelligent description. Unfortunately this is the only translation currently in print in the US. If you are able to, please order from a forgein printer (sometimes printed under the title The Outsider) or consider searching for an out of print copy not translated by Matthew Ward.

So much for being faithful to the original, in all its paradoxical simplicity. Non-flowery prose just isn't as moving.

this is only a drill

So I'm using Firefox, now, as the default browser, with an "hasta la vista" to Internet Explorer. Word in the blogosphere: it's more secure, more stable, blah blah blah. I'm a low-end user, so what do I care?

More important: I can now step out of the unemployment line. Thanks to a timely resignation, I'll be back at the helm, shipping literacy to the adolescent masses, seeking out the jetsam in a sea of flotsam, avoiding the shoals of indifference and steering toward the lighthouse of learning.

Ha-ha! I'm metaphor mad!

Or caffeine-deprived. Mmm, Batdorf and Bronson, world's greatest coffee.

two down

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
Time-shifting narrative structure that anticipates Quentin Tarantino's filmic stylings; shifts in person that blur the roles of reader and protagonist. Fuentes manages to use first, third, and second person, without overly confusing or aggravating the reader. The shifts in time at first seem random, but as the novel rears to the finish--as expected, Artemio Cruz dies--the death scene is juxtaposed with Cruz's birth, and the narrative comes full circle. Satire, pathos, and lyric description collide in this magnificent work. I'd say much more, but I'll save it for my IB class this coming fall.


Robert Harwell Fiske, The Dimwit's Dictionary
A useful reference, if you have trouble with cliches, stock phrases, or "moribund metaphors." Most helpful are the thesaurus-like recommendations. I hate, loathe, despise the phrase "in terms of," which, in the world of education, gets batted around like a beach ball in a graduation speech. "With some slight thought," Fiske writes, "in terms of can be pared from a sentence." For some, slight thought is tough work.


I'm not just reading novels, though. For your perusal, a fascinating (and brief) article on the intersection of traditionalism and Fascism, and its connection to Islamist movements.

This doesn't mean that all traditionalist belief is fascistic or that its restless quest for lost religious truth is inherently problematic; indeed, much of value has come out of traditionalist examinations of art and religion. But its anti-modern and anti-democratic polemics can have disturbing consequences. And Mr. Sedgwick shows that inscribed in its origins is the belief that truth could only be attained by overturning the modern world and its Western host; moral considerations and human consequences are treated as irrelevant.

Traditionalism declared a war in which modernity itself was the enemy. Only in the total destruction of democratic individualism and liberal humanism could the lost wisdom be restored. In some arenas, that is the battle still being fought.

Go to the source at traditionalists.org.

Almond Joy has nuts

I dragged the girlfriend out to see the Mima Mounds this morning. We trudged through the rain, delighting in the sounds of unadulterated Nature: chirrups, rustling branches, distant gunfire.

The formation of the mounds in question is a mystery. Gophers, long-since vanished, are suspect, as are geological phenomena, weathering and erosion, and aliens.

I suggested to the GF that perhaps the Earth was once a giant basketball to the gods; the Mima Mounds, much like other similar locations, are the remnants of the "nubbins" (her word). This may lead to a plethora of unanswered questions--but it would explain why the Moon looks like someone stamped "Top Flite" on the dark side.

here, let's polish those jackboots

Honey, let's visit the Ballard Locks. You know, watch the ships go through, watch the salmon run, take a few pictures. No, wait, let's skip bringing the camera. I'd hate to have to sort it out with the Homeland Security Department again.

The police officer had failed to rebut my arguments, but he was definitely being a lot nicer now (which was quite welcome). He’d been explaining how the SPD are required to investigate all calls, which I said I understood, but I was still looking for some real accountability. That’s when one of the three non-uniformed men stepped forward, brandishing his badge, and began talking at me with his own rendition of the voice of absolute authority.

“I’ve listened to this for over five minutes. Look here. You see this?” Special Agent McNamara said, producing his badge. “This is a federal badge. We’re not with the rest of them. We’re federal agents from Homeland Security...”

Good grief.

Read Ian Spier's account. Get angry. Call your representative. Write a letter to the editor. And please, please, please visit the Locks, and take all the damned photos you want. Because if they won't let you, the terrorists have already won.

Oh, and by the way, I've taken photos of the locks, too, in the past--what Seattle-area resident hasn't? Mea culpa!

[thanks to PZ Myers over at Pharyngula]

literacy is dead?

Video games, television, chat, sports, food, Furby maintenance... who has time, anymore, for good ol'-fashioned reading? Fewer and fewer all the time--or so reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. As an English teacher, should I be distressed that people across all age groups are reading less? Yes--not for the sake of reading itself, but for the fact that readers are much more likely to be politically involved. Language is access to power. Even without comissioning a study, I can intuit that the same people who have read a book in the past year are the ones who now have--and take--the time to critically dissect the newspaper or the website they're perusing. Do we need to get more teens reading Barthelme? You betcha. But how?

It might be discouraging to think of literature as the distraction of last resort, Mr. Reyes-Gavilan said. "But if we have to trick people into reading, we're happy to do that."

Incidentally, here's the current summer reading list:

fiction
*Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Collected Novellas
*Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
*Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
*Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
*Albert Camus, The Stranger

nonfiction
*Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate
*William Zinsser, On Writing Well
*Robert Harwell Fiske, The Dimwit's Dictionary
*Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness
*Leslie Baldacci, Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
*Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything

I'll have reviews up as I finish. And here's the wager: I'll have them all done by August 15th, or I'll chew and digest a page of Melville. Try that, Sir Francis Bacon.

[update: Starred entries are complete, which means reviews are on the way...]
[update: They're all done, and weeks ahead of schedule. I have too much free time.]

warmest regards

Bush and Lay's chum-chum correspondence.

...The letters, released by the Texas state archives in response to Freedom of Information requests, touch on personal matters like Bush's knee surgery, Christmas gifts, birthday greetings, and even a Lay heads-up regarding a Thomas Friedman story about globalization. Enron, in case anyone forgot, was Bush's biggest Lone Star political contributor.

Scariest moment: when Lay urges Bush to restructure Texas's electricity structure, because "...Historically, deregulated industries see savings in the 20 to 40 percent ranges over time. There is no reason to expect this industry to behave differently."

Well, if you consider Enron's fiscal fraud-mongering "normal" for the industry, okay.

The weirdest letter is the first:

Dear Ken:

One of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older--just like you!

55 years old. Wow! That is really old.

Thank goodness you have such a young, beautiful wife.

Laura and I value our friendship with you. Best wishes to Linda, your family, and friends.

Your younger friend,

George W. Bush

Such depth of feeling! Such humor and verve!

In the last pair of letters, both Lay and Bush misspell the author's name, writing "Freidman." D'oh.

[big shout-out to The Smoking Gun]

I can quit anytime

"Are you reading blogs again?" my girlfriend asks, with an exasperated sigh, every time she sees me plugging away at my laptop.

Yes, I am, especially The Panda's Thumb, which has scads of great new articles up, and also includes a stark admission by a fake young-earth-creationist (aren't they all?).

Back to work. Really.

if I owned Hell and Texas...

Texas: clean, shiny paradise, thanks to a stringent anti-littering campaign that reached its peak with the inventive phrase, "Don't Mess With Texas." But now evil corporations and dastardly individuals are co-opting in for their own purposes, and *shudder* profiting from it. What's an angry state to do? Go after 'em, with all the vigilance of a drunken posse.

Funnier, though, are the other state and city slogans that were inspired by the ubiquitous Texas motto.

In Oklahoma, residents are urged to "Keep Our Land Grand." Bumper stickers in Knoxville, Tenn., proclaim, "Don't Throw Down on K-Town." And Cincinnati has gone with "Don't Trash the 'Nati."

Or, how about:

"Don't Dump on Trump" (New Jersey)
"Keep Your Piddle Awffa Mah Fiddle" (Kentucky)
"Get A ------- Trash Bag, ------!" (NY)
"Preserve Our State's Godly, Creepy Disinfected Demeanor" (Utah)

Suggest your own in the comments.

[thanks again to Obscure Store]

frenetic ennui

So John Edwards it is. But you already knew that, because you've been reading the newspapers, trolling the blogs, staring dumbly at the television, snooping through your neighbor's trash, divining the droppings on your left front fender, conjuring up familiar spirits, or otherwise tuning into the zeitgeist.

How can someone simultaneously bring excitement to a campaign and be Mr. Dullsville von Claptrap? Oh, that's right, we're looking through those red-state blue-state 3-D glasses, that give us the whole accurate gospel-truth picture of American politics. Blue states apotheosize Edwards; red states think he's Captain Paisley. Or do we have it backwards? Ogden Nash, help us!

"The camel has a single hump;
the dromedary, two;
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure. Are you?"

Okay, back to scrubbing the bathroom floor with hallucinogenic petrochemicals.

gun it, Myrtle!

Half of the purpose of this blog's existence is to scoop Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store, by far the best compendium of weird news stories on the web.

As our Fearless Leader might put it, mission accomplished.

The story: a young man (25-30ish) disembarking a rental car from a Washington ferry starts to roll backward, panics, guns the engine, and goes sailing off into Puget Sound.

Ferry crew rescued him and he was taken to nearby Island Hospital. Harris said the man had a broken arm and suffered from hypothermia. One witness had a camera and was able to capture some of the rescue efforts.

Adding insult to injury, of course. Thanks to digital technology, this hapless bloke will live eternally on blooper shows.

And hey, doesn't G.W. look sharp in spectacles? Provide your own caption in the comments! Best one wins admiration, respect, and pride!

what a tangled web

Okay, so I've seen Spider Man II: Revenge of the Dead Guy's Hunky Son. Other than being overly preachy, it has one main fault: it's forgettable. I can barely remember any scene involving the Webbed Wonder (and this is fewer than twelve hours after seeing the film). The only moments that stick in the mind's craw include Doc Ock--his freakish arms, outlandish physics theories, and hilarious transformation into mwoo-ha-ha eeeeeeevil.

Bleargh. Thank goodness for matinees.

(And yes, I know I stand with a small minority of critics. Most of them are blown away by the movie's great special effects--yes, they're wow-worthy--and by its "heart," which mostly consists of close-up shots of teary eyes and pseudo-spiritual pronouncements about everybody needing heroes to... believe... in... *yawn*.)

"...you know what's gonna happen to you?"

Sure, I thought it was creepy that Coke was including GPS locaters in their new prize promotion--but I bought a twelve-pack anyway, because it was on sale, and I'm cheap like that.

But apparently, military high mucky-mucks are creeped out, too.

Paul Saffo, research director at The Institute for the Future, a technology research firm, likened the concerns to the Central Intelligence Agency's ban on Furbies, the stuffed toys that could repeat phrases.

"There's things generals should stay up late at night worrying about," he said. "A talking Coke can isn't one of them."

Or is it? "You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company," after all.