why you should telecommute

Son: "Daddy's home!"
Mom: "Thank goodness. I thought he had died at work again."

catfights

During the past few weeks, two feline scrappers have been battling for control of our apartment complex. One, a skittish orange cat, skulks in the bushes near the doorway. Its rival, a charcoal stray, apparently bested it in combat this morning, by the color of the tufts remaining on our welcome mat.

I have been attempting to teach the cats nonviolent communication techniques, to limited effect.

an open letter to the Lacey Timberland Library

Dear Lacey Timberland Library,

This morning I was sad to see that you've taken away the biggest nerd-magnet in the library, the New Non-Fiction Shelf, and replaced it with... nothing. As a reference librarian somewhat wistfully explained to me, new nonfiction is now shelved among the old, and marked with a tiny orange sticker, so if you're wondering what's fresh in the Dewey decimals, you have to take a largely random stroll through countless stacks. That's inefficient, inelegant, and inconvenient.

But I'm not going to complain without offering a solution. If the old way is forever gone, at least offer an easy access point, in the library and on the website, to new materials. One easily found link--"What's New in Your Library!"--connected to data particularized for a preferred location, and, most important, on the front page, not buried three nonintuitive clicks in. (The RSS-enabled "new nonfiction" list is a step in the right direction, but isn't sortable by library.)

And how about a low-tech supplement: print a list of new books every month, and place it near the nonfiction shelves.

I'll stop there. Free advice is best given in small doses, right?

Your long-time, otherwise satisfied patron,

Jim

Truth loses; Kent wins

Another day, another educational--in both senses--opinion from the Supreme Court. This time, students who had sued Kentridge High School to allow a Bible club were turned down.

The court refused to hear an appeal from the high school students who wanted to form the Truth Bible Club at Kentridge High School in Washington state in 2001.

The school refused to let the group be chartered as a school club. They cited the group's name, the fact that students would have to pledge to Jesus Christ to vote in the club and that allowing the club in would bring religion into the school. The club's would-be founders then sued the Kent School District, claiming discrimination.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the district did not violate the students' First Amendment rights by requiring them to allow all students full membership in their club.

I don't see anything unconstitutional about allowing a Bible club on campus--but the club's requirement that members pledge loyalty to Jesus seems out of place in a school environment. School clubs should be open to all students, period. If students want to exclude others, they're free to form their own clubs on their own time--and own dime.

squid shreds

"The heart has reasons that reason cannot know." --Blaise Pascal

virtual reality gets really realistic

Nick Bostrom's "simulation argument" just got a little more plausible.

The computing power that is now available makes it feasible to simulate physical processes from the smallest scale upwards, rather than trying to approximate their overall effect.

For example, when computer scientist Jonathan Kaldor at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, wanted to create virtual fabrics better those that had gone before he did something unthinkable just a few years ago. "We decided to start from the [individual] yarns. It sounds crazy but it actually works."

Knitting garments like socks and scarves from virtual wool modelled on real-world yarn gives results that stretch and deform realistically no matter how close up the view. The results could also be used with a haptic interface to provide the feel of fabric.

To add further realism, the team now plans to simulate the fuzz on the surface of each piece of yarn that adds friction between threads.

Click through and watch the video to see the improved physics in action.

move over, oral critique

The digital era has finally arrived--for debate judges. Jeffrey Miller of Georgia Forensics throws down the gauntlet:

When Brandon & I started this website two years ago we had one main goal, we were set on building community and supporting free, open knowledge. I’m taking this one step farther by challenging the judging community across the nation, not just in Georgia, to become better teachers and more responsible judges.

I challenge judges to use some type of website (wikispace, wordpress, blogspot, etc) and post a DETAILED ballot of every round you judge.

The idea was inspired by Michael Antonucci, Lexington & Georgetown Univ. debate coach, last year. He began a blogspot to record all of his ballots & decisions.

So far, three other judges have signed on.

I have a full plate, and can only pack on so many more appetizers, intellectually speaking, but since I'm not only a coach of one team, but an instructor to hundreds of students all over the country, well, why not give it a go?

Though I can't formally promise that I'll type up every single round in detail, I'll take my laptop to every round and post as many as I can. (I'll ask permission of students before doing so, in case they're afraid of being "scouted" by the competition.)

It strikes me as a worthwhile venture, and I hope others will try it as well.

no more teachers' dirty looks

In about five minutes, the 45 will reach CHS, taking me downtown to Les Schwab, where the wife's Mazda is getting new tires and an alignment. Today I've spent four hours at the school, closing the book on spring '09, learning the last bits of trivia for my new job as Department Coordinator, and cleaning up the mountains of detritus in my classroom.

Summer is about three minutes from really, truly commencing.

Feels pretty good.

Update: Free wi-fi at the downtown Les Schwab. Car to be done at 3:30? Take your time, gents...

the case of the sixteen-year-old infant

Brooke Greenberg is sixteen years old. In a way. Due to a yet-unknown series of genetic (and maybe epigenetic) factors, she is an infant; her development is, in a word, "disorganized." Andy Coghlan of NewScientist explains:

When Walker and his colleagues sequenced Brooke's DNA, they found that the genes associated with the premature-ageing diseases were normal, unlike the mutated versions in patients with Werner's Syndrome and progeria. "That was the first thing we looked at," he said.

Nor does the analysis support the idea that Brooke is somehow "frozen-in-time", in perpetual infanthood. Instead, Walker and colleagues found that different parts of her body and anatomy are maturing at different rates.

"I think she has differential growth of her body," says Walker. "It's not growing like a unified organism, but in fragmented parts."

Her brain, for example, is scarcely more mature than that of a newborn infant. Although she can recognise her mother and make gestures and noises to articulate her wishes, she can't talk.

Yet her bones – although still abnormally short – are around 10 years old, as determined by the maturity of the cells and structures. And despite being a teenager, she still has her baby teeth, with an estimated developmental age of about eight years....

Walker thinks that Brooke is the first recorded case of what he describes as "developmental disorganization". His hypothesis is that the cause is disruption of an as-yet unidentified gene, or genes, that hold the key to ageing by orchestrating how an organism matures to adulthood, reproduces, then gradually ages and dies.

An incredible, existentially baffling case.

SCOTUS says no to strip search in school

Last April, when the Supreme Court was hearing oral argument about whether school officials could strip search a student suspected of carrying contraband ibuprofen, I wrote,

No middle school authority figure anywhere should be given the legal authority to strip search a student when looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen. This should not be controversial.

Two months later, the Court has ruled--and they got it right.

Thankfully.

The only unsettled question: whether Savana Redding, the student in question, can hold school officials individually liable. Though I'm no fan of excessive litigation, I hope Redding wins that argument in a lower court. Students keep their rights--and their dignity--when they enter the schoolhouse door.

Resolved: It is just for highly indebted poor countries to repudiate their debt.

First in a series of previews of the potential LD resolutions for 2009-2010.

One of the potential LD resolutions for 2009-2010 offers a good balance of ethics, history, and international relations.

Resolved: It is just for highly indebted poor countries to repudiate their debt.

What counts as a "highly indebted poor country?"* As the World Bank explains, an HIPC must face an

...unsustainable debt situation after the full application of the traditional debt relief mechanisms (such as the application of Naples terms under the Paris Club agreement). A country's debt level is considered unsustainable if debt-to-export levels are above a fixed ratio of 150 percent; or, where countries have very open economies where the exclusive reliance on external indicators may not adequately reflect the fiscal burden of external debt the debt-to-government revenues are above of 250 percent [sic].

(The Paris Club's website offers an alternative summary and history of the program.) "Repudiating" debt means refusing to pay it off; in the larger sense, the term includes a wider connotation of a failure to recognize the rightness or truth of a situation.

3 a: to refuse to accept ; especially : to reject as unauthorized or as having no binding force b: to reject as untrue or unjust 4: to refuse to acknowledge or pay

Thus, the resolution requires the affirmative to argue that refusing to pay off one's international creditors is, in fact, just.

Why?

There are several larger strategies the affirmative could adopt. One could be to argue that the international monetary system, either because of present or past injustices, has made victims out of HIPCs, and uses debt as a weapon to conform developing nations to multinational, corporate desires. (Consider this the "international predatory lending" argument.) This route is explored on websites like Odious Debts, for example. Another general strategy could be to justify debt repudiation on pragmatic grounds: for the country concerned, it eliminates the primary barrier to development at a comparatively minor cost to creditors. From any individual nation's perspective, its social contract is with its own citizens, who would gladly shake off the burden. (On a further note, when freed of the debt, the country is more likely to engage in constructive commerce with its neighbors, leading to net gains on all sides.) Another interesting strategy might be to take a position inspired by the late great libertarian Murray Rothbard, who, in arguing for the U.S.'s repudiation of its own national debt, provides grounds for HIPCs to repudiate their own:

It is precisely the drying up of future public credit that constitutes one of the main arguments for repudiation, for it means beneficially drying up a major channel for the wasteful destruction of the savings of the public. What we want is abundant savings and investment in private enterprises, and a lean, austere, low-budget, minimal government. The people and the economy can only wax fat and prosperous when their government is starved and puny.

What arguments for repudiation are you considering? And what's an appropriate response for the Negative? Get your summer LD fix in the comments.




*Note that the official designation is "Heavily Indebted Poor Country."

budget passes; Cispus gone, sports saved (for now)

Last night the Olympia School Board passed a budget for 2009-10. Venice Buhain reports:

The board restored about $162,500 in programs at its meeting Tuesday night, including the district-wide bus for the Lincoln Options program, a half-time counselor at Avanti High School, and high school gymnastics, drill team and boys swimming.

Cutting the music and physical education specialists for kindergarten through third grade to save $261,000 had been considered, but none of the board members brought it up as an amendment.

“It wasn’t necessary,” board president Carolyn Barclift told the other board members.

Superintendent Bill Lahmann’s original budget proposal had included about $1.9 million in cuts, and relies on spending about $815,000 from reserves, also known as the ending fund balance.

The board upheld the original budget proposal’s call for administrator furloughs and cutting the overnight trip to the Cispus Learning Center.

To save Cispus, the community would have to raise about $70,000.

The Board also voted to set up a committee to study sports funding. Unless a miracle occurs in the state economy and educational funding structure, we'll be talking about further cuts same time next year.

Update: Buhain's blog entry on who voted for what when is quite useful.

marriage is a sham

At least, the marriages allegedly arranged by a Northwest restaurateur.

The owner of a chain of popular Thai restaurants in the Seattle area has been indicted on charges she paid her workers tens of thousands of dollars to enter into sham marriages with her relatives, allowing them to stay in the U.S.

Varee Bradford, who operates five Thai Ginger restaurants in Seattle, Redmond, Issaquah and Bellevue, was arrested Tuesday on charges of immigration fraud conspiracy and three counts of immigration document fraud. She was released on personal recognizance Tuesday afternoon after making an initial appearance in U.S. District Court.

Gerard Depardieu, what hast thou wrought?

are you a hypochondriac?

Read this article to find out for sure.

[via Kenneth Anderson (no relation)]





(Actually, it's a trick: you will be by the time you finish reading it. Sorry.)

let the summer commence

Back from Birmingham.

My summer awash in a sea of possibilities, with a few firm plans, including a Mariners game with Dad (Gutierrez Bobblehead Night!), a wedding gig with the band, and a camping trip in Oregon.

Intellectually, I have some blog projects to start, some writing from last summer to revisit, some planning for next year's classes to finish, some educational books to read, some quality tweets to dream up.

But first, the all-important (and geographically delayed) classroom cleanup and checkout, which includes stacks of tests and self-evals to grade.

So let the summer commence, sometime later this week.

you, y'all, all y'all

Apropos of being in Alabama for one more day...

It starts with a discussion of the vagaries of standard English usage. It evolves into a thoroughgoing and sometimes contentious analysis of the greatest of all pronouns: "y'all."

NFL debate finals: taking the good with the bad

First, the really good: I have a lot more hope for Public Forum as an event. I think the 2-minute summary speech is a travesty, but the top two teams at NFL Finals today acquitted themselves well in a lively and very close round. I would have voted Con because the Pro team appeared to lose a little composure, dropping the ball on the Con's objection that the hardline regime would get most of the benefits of a financial influx. (Pro didn't extend the impacts of soft power, either, or fully rebut the charge that the Castro regime is inimical to any sort of cooperation with the U.S.)

Second, the good: the LD round, in which the right to life (or, as was ceded in cross-ex, autonomy) clashed with the balance of rights and responsibilities. (The resolution: military conscription is unjust.) It was a thought-provoking examination of the claims the state has--or doesn't--on the lives of its citizens. I was edging Aff, but without flowing, and since the round was so tight, I'm not sure who would've ended up with my vote.

Third, the surprising: not one speaker mentioned the importance of Birmingham to the civil rights struggle, either in a speech or an introduction.

Fourth, the surprisingly bad: the policy final was a huge letdown. My PuFo team wanted to see what the event was like, and I don't think they got the best representative round. There were lots of zingers, but the quantity of wit didn't match the quality of argumentation. The Negative's reliance on "political capital" insolvency and the standby nuke war disadvantage, as well as their apparent ignorance of some basic biological concepts, matched up with the Aff's underdefended salmon depletion claim and altogether too narrow approach to the benefits of "VIVACE" power, made for an unnecessarily murky round. I'd have voted Affirmative for not insulting my intelligence.

Coming soon: the results!

Update: Since the official word's not in yet, I'm going with Victory Briefs' reportage.

Policy: Damien HS's Hernandez and Quinn (on the Neg)
LD: Shivani Vohra - Hockaday (on the Neg)
PuFo: Robert Kindman & Josh Zoffer from Durham, NC (on the Neg--see a pattern?)

three rounds of debate in one glorious day

Today, my sophomore PuFo team and I will watch the final rounds of Policy, PuFo, and LD debate at the madhouse that is the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Center. (I figure if they're gluttons for Policy punishment, might as well show them the best.)

I'm mostly interested in the LD round, since I haven't gotten to watch any debates on the conscription topic, which I thought was a good one. The PuFo Cuba resolution, on the other hand, wore me out in the twelve flights I judged. I'm praying either team has a fresh approach--maybe that now's the time to normalize, because Fidel wants to join an over-fifty softball league in the DC area?

NFL 09-10 topic choices released

The good guys at Victory Briefs have the scoop: ten topic choices for coaches to vote on for the 09-10 season.

My initial top five:

Resolved: In the United States, the principle of jury nullification is a just check on government.

Resolved: A just government ought to guarantee adequate housing for all of its citizens.

Resolved: Public health concerns justify compulsory immunization.

Resolved: Governments have an obligation to pursue and disclose the truth regarding suspected crimes by previous administrations.

Resolved: Compulsory inclusion of non-felons’ DNA in any government database is unjust.

There's a good balance here of morality, law, science/health (we never get enough in LD) and history.

My least favorite:

Resolved: It is just for highly indebted poor countries to repudiate their debt.

What's "highly indebted?" What's "poor?" Those terms are too squishy for my liking. The Internet (via the comments below) sets me straight. Random fact: Tim Geithner was involved in the original setup of the American approach to HIPC; I'm betting he didn't think he'd be helming the economy of a HIRC a decade down the road.

six and done

My sophomore Public Forum team didn't break. I'm proud of them, though, for merely getting this far--especially for sophomores with fewer than 20 PuFo rounds between 'em, and despite having debated only five rounds together before Nationals. Next year they'll be back, more confident, better prepared, and better versed in the event. They've already seen ten times the competition that we have back home, and they're wiser for it.

Their tournament is done. As for me, I have judging obligations through Thursday's semifinal round. Which means that tomorrow, I'll...

1. Wake up at six, clean up, eat breakfast.
2. Drive over to Spain Park HS to judge the 8:00 PuFo round.
3. Pick up tickets to Alabama Adventures for some of the the Western WA crew.
4. Drive back to the hotel to deliver tickets, and then shuttle students to Alabama Adventures.
5. Leave students there, since my day of judging isn't done.
6. Drive back to Spain Park to judge the 2:00 round.
7. Drive back to the hotel.
8. Try not to be jealous.

Somewhere in that time, the Cuban embargo will have been lifted, diplomatic relations restored, the Cubans freed, and the Castro regime exiled in embarrassment.

Or vice versa.