Right Wing Nation

Chengdu Chicken

I started with this homemade chicken stock — note that it is not a pale, insipid, light yellow color.

There are lots of things you can do with it, but I needed to use up some tomatoes from the farmers’ market, plus some shiitakes, some Hungarian wax peppers, and green beans. So I took the two ripest tomatoes, quartered them, and simmered them for twenty minutes or so in a quart of the stock. I then ran it through the food mill, and ended up with rich, tomato-ey chicken stock. I diced the other tomato (it was very ripe, but not as soft), and added it. I stemmed and shredded the shiitakes and added them, and the green beans. I looked in the refrigerator and remembered the tortellini, and got out the pecorino and parmagianno. I added some rosemary, the tortellini, and grated some cheese. I sliced the wax pepper into small shreds, and added them at the very end — and ended up with soup.

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Studying improves student performance. So did the authors of this “study” get an NSA research grant, and if so, how much?

I’m going to need to create a new blog category for money flushed down the toilet.

Top stories: Killer babies are on the loose! and Honeymoon couple attacked by goldfish!

I bought a National Enquirer once. I couldn’t resist the headline: Killer trees stalk America! However, I never could bring myself to go through that particular cashier’s line again. But online . . .

For all the whining about evil “high-stakes” testing, you’d never know that 20% of the enrolled students in DC didn’t come to school on the second day of classes. I guess they were too “disenfranchised” to be bothered.

More likely, they were out committing crimes.

Considering that this comes from the “paper of record,” the “flagship newspaper of the nation,” this is fairly depressing (hat tip to Hot Air — I would have stumbled upon it when I hit Instapundit later, but credit where it is due):

It is an eminently good thing that the anti-suicide measure would require medical specialists to keep track of veterans found to be high risks for suicide. But that’s to care for them as human beings, under that other constitutional right — to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Respect for the grave sacrifices by veterans requires the Senate to strike down the Coburn ploy and hurry this vital measure to President Bush.

I think a commenter said it best:

Pray allow me to offer my heartiest congratulations to the Times: the mind-numbing vapidity, idiocy, and factual inaccuracy of this latest effort is nothing short of breathtaking. And, when it comes to the Times and its sister publications, that’s saying a lot.

Indeed, it is. Perhaps the staff at the “newspaper of record” might want to actually read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, no doubt for the first time in their lives. Better yet, send them back to elementary school.

Guess what the red circles on the map below are.

Have an idea yet? Answer below the fold.

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Richard Jewell is dead.

But before I go, the Carnival of Education is posted.

Pat Schroeder: Conservatives Can’t Read
Statisticians: Liberals Can’t Do Math

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I’ve reworked this to make it a bit more readable (particularly to the non-math folks), and here and there, I’ve clarified or added material. I hope it helps. I’ve also added a section for those of you who use mostly written assessments, like papers or esssay questions (yes, you can use statistics to help your teaching). I realize not everybody has SPSS or SAS (I should say only stats geeks have SPSS or SAS), but everybody has Excel, and that’s all you need. But first, you have to enable the data analysis toolpack.

1. Run Excel. Yes, now.
2. Click Tools.
3. Click Add-ins.
4. Check Analysis ToolPak and Analysis ToolPak - VBA
5. Click OK.

Click Tools again, and Data Analysis will appear in the menu (it will stay there — you only have to enable it once). That’s what you’ll use.

Ready? Here we go.

Statistics are an invaluable tool for improving your teaching and making your class fairer for your students. With statistics, you can identify bad test questions and throw them out. You can identify questions many students should have gotten right but did not, and determine what went wrong. You can determine how well the assignments you give your students work, and you can determine how well you are preparing students for those exams.

I’m assuming two things. First, I assume that you’re teaching the material, and not doing test-prep in class. Teaching the material is teaching to the test. There is no excuse for doing test prep instead of covering the material. Second, I assume that your school curriculum matches the state curriculum (and therefore the test) fairly closely. If not, well, there’s a serious problem with the school curriculum, and the administration needs to fix it.

Let’s start with that 100-point test you just gave (assuming your data are in an Excel file). Open your gradebook in Excel, and — pay attention here — note that one thing that sucks about Excel’s Data Analysis Tookpack is that (usually) data have to be in adjacent columns, so prepare to do some copying and pasting. Get your exam scores in one column, then click Tools, Data Analysis. Select Descriptive Statistics from the list, then click OK. Click in the Input Range box, then select the exam scores. If you have a label (text — you know, like "first exam") in the first cell, make sure you check Labels in First Row. Click in the New Worksheet Ply box, and type Exam 1 Descriptive Stats (or something like that), then click OK. Excel will calculate the descriptive stats and put them in a new worksheet called Exam 1 Descriptive Stats (or whatever you chose to call it).

Here are your descriptive stats:

Your mean is just a little low (ideally, it should be in the mid 70s), but not low enough for concern. Your mode (most frequently occurring score) is 100, and that’s always good, but your standard deviation is large: Each score on average varied 24.94 points from the mean, and that’s a lot of spread. Your kurtosis is a bit low, too, and along with the large standard deviation, it looks like you have a lot of scores in the tails. It’s not a bad exam from just looking at the descriptive stats, though you would have liked to have had more students clustering around the mean — that is, a lower standard deviation.

Now, we’re going to calculate correlations to test the effectiveness of individual questions for each student, and whether the student got the question correct or not.

Next, look at the correlations between the individual questions and the total score.Statisticians will immediately hear warning bells go off, and they’re correct. The individual questions are part of the exam score, so normally, we would not do this (this is known as collinearity). But here, we’re using collinearity to our advantage.

We need the question data and the exam scores in adjacent cells, or a contiguous block (here, we’ll say we’re looking at questions 11 and 15). Again pull up the Data Analysis Toolpack, but this time, select Correlation from the list. Click in the input box, then select the columns with the question and exam score data, making sure to select the labels (and making sure to check Labels in First Row). Again, in New Worksheet Ply type a worksheet name (Exam question-total correlations), then click OK.

Switch to the Exam question-total correlations worksheet, and this is what you see:

Here’s what we’re doing. Both questions are part of the exam score, so we should see the effects of collinearity — that is, we should see a significant correlation between the question and the score, where significant here means greater than or equal to 0.3. When we don’t see the effects of collinearity, there’s a problem. Note that the correlation coefficient between Question 11 and the Exam Score is 0.02! There is something bad wrong with that question. First, pull the exam and read the question; usually, when this happens, it’s pretty obvious what went wrong, often a typo or a badly worded question, but sometimes a question that goes beyond the scope of what you covered. Once in a great while there will be nothing wrong with the question. If that is the case, leave it in, but otherwise, delete it from the exam and the exam results. Note that Question 35 highly correlates with the Exam Score. Leave it in. Do this for all the questions, deleting any that have suspiciously low correlations after you read the question and determine if there is anything wrong with it.

As you’re doing this, you will usually notice that there are questions on topics you covered in class that students should have gotten right, but did not. This is a pedagogical red flag (when this happens with questions only from reading assignments, it indicates that students didn’t do the reading, and I find that these are the questions most students miss). How did you cover those topics? How can you change your presentation to make it clearer to your students?

Go through all the questions fewer than half the students got correct, and run them through the same process. Compare the questions on similar topics. If students missed many of the questions on the same topic, that’s a sign that there’s a problem with the way you present the topic.

Use statistics to tell you how well you’re presenting the material.

If you spot a problem, bring it up in class. Tell your students that a lot of them had trouble with whatever it was, and ask them how you could have made it clearer for them. Never underestimate the value of student feedback. Ask your colleagues. If you have trouble, always get help.

You can also use statistics to determine how effective those assignments you give your students are. Let’s say you’ve just given your first 200-point exam, and before that, you had given several assignments (we’ll look at three). Your data look like this (the table represents part, not all, of your data):

Run correlations on the assignments and exam:

If your assignments are effective (and if they cover the same skills covered on the exam), you should get at least a 0.3 (better a 0.5) correlation coefficient between the assignments and the exam score. Assignments 1 and 2 correlate pretty highly, but note the third assignment. There is nearly no correlation between it and the exam score. This is a great big red flag, so compare the three assignments. It’s not enough just to ditch the third assignment and replace it with something else; you need to figure out what is wrong with the third assignment. What is different about the third one? How are the first two similar–and how is the third different from the first two? Whatever it is, it’s not working.

Note that you can use exactly the same method to determine how well your assignments and exams are teaching students what they need to know by running correlations on your students class scores and their standardized exam scores. If you’re a coordiantor or adminstrator, you can also determine which teachers are better preparing their students. Here are two teachers’ 100-point final exam scores and the standardized exam scores (only part of the data are represented):

First, let’s look at the descriptive stats:

Both teachers’ scores are lower than the standardized exam scores, and this can be a good thing, provided that the class exams are covering the right material. Both have fairly high standard deviations, though the second teacher’s is higher than the first, both have a low kurtosis, usually indicating more data in the tails, and both are slightly left skewed, indicating more data in the left tail (low scores) than the right. Note that the second teacher’s minimum score is 13/100! From only looking at the descriptive stats, it looks like the second teacher probably has a more difficult class than the first. But difficulty isn’t the issue; how well the teacher’s class matches the curriculum is the issue. To check that, we run correlations:

We see a vast difference between the two teachers. The first teacher’s scores correlate highly with the standardized exam score, at 0.75. This means his curriculum fairly closely matches what the state prescribes. But the second teacher’s curriculum doesn’t correlate highly with the state curriculum at all, at only 0.17. The second teacher should sit down with the first and compare what they do, to see where he is going astray from the curriculum.

Universities often give departmental exams to large undergraduate classes. The same method can be used if you teach one of those classes to see how well you are teaching what you’re supposed to be teaching.

If you teach a course with mostly written assessments, statistics are still a valuable tool, although not as precise. You have to have some kind of anchor, even if it’s only in your head — you cannot meaningfully read a stack of papers and assign grades without some idea of what an A or a C paper is. The problem is grade creep, or rather, consistency. I know all about reading papers — I coordinated an ESL writing program and taught many writing courses. Assume that you’re going to grade inconsistently, and to guard against it, take frequent breaks from grading those papers. Grade creep arises in part from fatigue. As you tire, you tend to read less closely and grade less accurately.

Use a pencil to grade the papers. First check your curve. Let’s say you have 30 students. If 10 or 15 got As, ask yourself if you’re grading too leniently. You may not be, of course. You may just have a good class. But you should always check.

After you’ve gone through them, pick out a couple of A papers, B papers, etc., from the top and bottom of the stack. Compare them. Is that A paper from the bottom of the stack of comparable quality to the A paper from the top? If your papers check, write the grades in ink.

For you folks, stats are more valuable used over time, to judge the consistency of your grading over time. If you only use letter grades, convert them to numbers (there are lots of ways to do this, but a standard university GPA system — 4=A, 3.7=A-, 3.3=B+, 3=B, etc. — is the simplest). After you’ve graded a few assignments, run descriptive statistics on them. If the assignments accurately reflect what you’re covering in class, the mean scores for the assignments should not vary wildly — that is, if your class mean for your first assignment was 2.7, and your third assignment mean was 1.3 or 3.4, there’s probably a problem.

After a few assignments, pull up your gradebook and make a line chart of your students’ scores. This is a quick and easy way to spot potential problems. If, say, Mary’s scores are steadily dropping whereas most of the other students’ scores are level, or rising, you need to look into it. Go over her work. Is her work really degrading over time? Or (and it happens) did you inaccurately grade her? If the problem is Mary’s work, then you need to talk to the appropriate administrator. If the problem is your grading, then you need to correct it, and talk to Mary, explain and apologize. We all make mistakes. Students, like anyone else, respect people who admit and correct their mistakes.

After your students have taken the standardized exam, run correlations on your assignment scores and the exam scores. Expect a lower correlation, perhaps, but still, there should be a correlation. If there isn’t, something is wrong. Let’s say you teach history, and you (appropriately) want students to focus on historical context and issues in their assignments, but place little emphasis on dates. If the exam tests students on dates, you have done them a disservice. Don’t abandon historical context, but place more emphasis in your assignments on what the exam tests. If you send the message that something isn’t important, students are not going to learn it.

If you teach multiple sections of the same class, then you should compare your sections’ scores to check yourself for consistency (this is particularly valuable for those whose courses do not allow much discrete-point assessment). Yes, different classes develop different personalities, and there will be variation between sections, but too much variation indicates possible problems.

After every assessment, I run descriptive statistics (see above) on all my sections’ scores. Let’s say you teach two sections of the same course (we’ll call them a and b), with 27 students in one, and 30 in the other. You have just given a 100-point assisgnment, and the scores look like this:

When you calculate the descriptive statistics, your results look like this:

Actually, if you got stats like these (note how close the two means are), you wouldn’t worry about consistency, but for the sake of illustration, we’ll say you want to compare the means.

You need to use statistics to test similarities and differences because of random variation. The difference in two sets of scores may be due to random variation, or it may be due to something else. The standard probability we set is 95% (that the difference is due to random variation). We can’t run ANOVA, because the two classes have different numbers of students. Instead, we’ll run a t-test.

Run the Data Analysis Toolpack (Tools, Data Analysis), and select T-Test: Two Sample Assuming Equal Variances. Click OK. Click in the Variable 1 Range box, then select the first class scores. Click in the Variable 2 Range box, and select the second class scores (select the labels at the top). We’re comparing the means to each other, and not to a specific value, so in the Hypothesized Mean Difference box type 0. Check Labels, and type 0.05 in the Alpha box (if it isn’t already there). Select New Worksheet Ply, and in the box, type a name for the results worksheet, like t-test. Click OK.

Here are your results:

The t-test tells us that if these two sets of scores are from the same population — that is, if they have the same population mean — that we would expect the means to differ by this much 57% of the time. Therefore, the differences between the means is random variation, and is not cause for concern. If the P(T<=t) two-tail value is less than 0.05, then the difference is not due to random variation, and you should explore further. What works well for one class does not always work well for another.

The point I’m trying to make is that statistics are more than just a tool for research (or for some of us, sheer fun). Statistics are an important tool that tell you how well you’re teaching, how well your curriculum matches the states’, how fair your tests are, and how your classes compare, and all by doing nothing more complicated than Excel. If you’ll forgive the gun reference, statistics are the laser grips that allow you to shoot in the dark.

Who finds the following “hateful and intolerant”?

• The right of all people to live in freedom and dignity
• The freedom of the individual conscience to change religions or have no religion at all
• The equality of dignity of women and men
• The right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion

Go here to find out.

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Brown people cause global warming!

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Just got back. It’s a big — really big — county fair with a tent city. Hundreds of tents. People set up camp and live there. Here are a few pics (click to immensify):

I don’t think they have 4-H or the FFA in New York City.

Yup, you read that right. Deep-fried oreos (they’re fairly nasty, actually).

Pennsylvania Dutch-ness is unavoidable.

Here’s the edge of tent city (kind of reminded me of the Grapes of Wrath).

Because we don’t have much of a Muslim community, there is no “Please don’t have sex with the goats” sign (oops — was that insensitive?)

I couldn’t resist the “We raise them, we roast them” sign. Good sandwiches. Roasted pork with horseradish. There were no PETA protesters strutting around in pig costumes.

Speaking of moonbats, well, there was lots of anti-moonbattiness.

This is a 4-H exhibit made by a 13 year-old. I took a few zooms so you could appreciate it.

Note the NRA sticker — and contrast this with the kid who was suspended for drawing a picture of a gun. I’m having a hard time imagining that happening in the schools here.

Here’s the other side:

Here’s the zoom:

Note the Army and Marines stickers. Also note under Know and Obey Laws there are a hunting and trapping magazine and a fishing magazine.

Oh, and there was this huge contingent of little old ladies in these bright red T-shirts. On the back, well, here’s the picture (when the contingent walked by, I had no hands free, but I got this one, waiting for her deep-fried oreos):

That’s just cool. Little old ladies: Dancin’ Boots Line Dancers.

And somebody’d better call the ACLU. Look at what’s on the official schedule for today:

• Cowboys for Christ Worship Service
• Sabbath School - Sponsored by the Centre Co. Sabbath School Assn.
• Ju-st Proclaim
• Worship Services - Conducted by the Chaplain of Centre County Pomona Grange No. 13

More pics. I’ll post them later on my flickr account.

Oh. The damned neighborhood picnic is today (starts in ten minutes). If we go, we have to take something. Maybe we will. Maybe we won’t. Dunno.

From Pam:

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post “Thou Shall Not Steal, “Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery”, and “Thou Shall Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

Read the whole thing.

Maybe fish and chips destroy brain cells. Or maybe it’s calling sausages “bangers.” From Gabriel comes this cluelessness from the UK:

Labour came to power in 1997 promising to tackle both crime and its causes. Since then violent crime has doubled - and last week Rhys Jones became the 18th young person this year to be shot or stabbed to death.

1997 is also the year the UK banned handguns. So since the UK banned handguns, violent crime has doubled. So how’s that ban workin out for ya, Brits?

I’m not claiming that the ban has caused an increase in crime — but it’s obviously done nothing to deter it. I doubt that a policy of slapping criminals on the hand instead of throwing them in prison to rot, and instead prosecuting crime victims for defending themselves has helped.

Here’s a suggestion for the Brits. How about you start being Britain again, instead of being Euroweenies, how’s that for a plan?

We went to the farmers’ market this morning for more of that ay-maze-ingly good corn — I’m going to make that ay-maze-ingly good corn pudding — but you can’t just eat corn pudding. So we drove to Giant. I found really nice broccoli (I love broccoli), and we headed to the back of the store where they keep the fleisch.

The Ritz cracker crumbs on top of that corn pudding. That’s sheer genius.

I’m not sure what it is, but around here, it’s hard to find thick-cut, bone-in pork chops. Thick-cut chops here are almost always boneless (I’ll eat boneless chops, but I don’t understand why they exist). But today, Giant had two, and only two, thick-cut, bone-in chops (1.8 pounds total weight). So I’ll brown them in butter, add seasonings and a half-cup of apple cider, cover them tightly, and braise them for 20 minutes, remove them, add a few tablespoons of cream to the pan and reduce it to a glaze, then toss the chops back in the pan to coat them. That, plus corn pudding and that broccoli (with butter).

Speaking of butter, I made another one of those butter syrup-soaked pound cakes this morning. I’ve had four pieces already. Great stuff.

British forces under the command of Vice Adm. Sir Alexander Cockburn and Maj. Gen. Robert Ross set fire to Washington, D.C. Hat tip: the Tank.

By gun dealers and a state representative:

More than two dozen gun dealers and a state lawmaker filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block a planned four-day freeze on gun sales to allow an upgrade of the state’s computerized background check system.

The gun shops and Rep. Timothy Solobay, D-Washington, say the system upgrade could be completed without shutting down the system or by performing the work after normal business hours.

C. Robert Keenan III, a Pittsburgh lawyer representing the gun dealers in the Commonwealth Court suit, said state police also could use a national system of computerized background checks as an alternative.

“If it has to be shut down during the day, have the (state police) personnel connect to the national instant check system and get it done that way,” Keenan said.

Solobay represents the extreme western district of the state commonwealth. As for this four-day nonsense, only an inept, bungling government bureaucracy would require four days to upgrade a database.

Ted Nugent isn’t mincing words:

Hat tip: Ace.

Well, I think it’s funny.

The Weatherby and the Winchester (click to hugefy):

The S&W 1911 and the Remington:

Blame Tim Blair.

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The Carnival of Ed is posted.

I found this on MVRWC:

There has to be a story there.

I really don’t know what to say about this. Don’t vacuum in the nude? No, that doesn’t work. Don’t get your privates too close to the vacuum?

“British Dwarf’s Penis Gets Stuck In Vacuum Cleaner”

Midgets. What would we do without them?

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I first published this last year. Since the school year is starting, I brushed off the dust, and reposted it with a few additions. (If you know somebody who’s going off to college, you should point him to Ben Stein’s essay.)

When I was in my early grad school career back in the 80s, I was told that I had been awarded a graduate assistantship and would begin teaching when the fall semester began. I’d taken a practicum — which was a waste of time — but had no coursework in pedagogy. The Friday before the Monday on which the semester began, I was given a copy of the textbook, told where and when my classes met, and sent off to teach.

What I learned about teaching and learning, I learned from experience (that should delight the constructivist crowd). I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I managed to learn from them. Still, I don’t think the best way to become a teacher is to be tossed into a classroom with very little prep, though it happens all the time (that won’t delight the constructivist crowd).

So based on my experiences as a teacher, here are my tips for new (and perhaps not so new) teachers.

Never forget that you don’t teach in a vacuum. Your class isn’t just your class. How well they learn what you’re supposed to teach them will affect how well they learn in other classes down the road — just as classes they had before yours affect how well they learn in your class.

Teach accordingly.

Be skeptical of everything you heard in ed school. It should be obvious, but teaching hand-holding feel-good “let’s all sit in a circle and share!” seminars in that ed school and teaching students actual content are two very different things. Just because your professors offer courses doesn’t mean they know anything about teaching — particularly if their idea of education is turning students into little goose-stepping Maoists. If you’re smart, you figured out in ed school that 95% of what you read and were told was horse manure.

Go find a good, experienced teacher, and ask him for advice. Note that I said good and experienced; not all experienced teachers are good teachers. Who has a reputation for being a good teacher? Whose students get good scores and seem to come out of class having learned a great deal? That’s the person you want to talk to. Ask him if he has any advice for you as a fledgling teacher, and pay attention to what he says, even if it contradicts what Professor Moonbeam told you in ed school. If he’s amenable, use him as a resource and mentor. I really wish I had had somebody like that in the 80s.

Grade as objectively as possible. Despite their popularity, wholly subjective grading criteria such as “participation” are a bad idea. They introduce a subjective and potentially unfair variable into the way you treat your students. Having said that, there are good arguments for giving a participation grade, but if you do, it should be only a very small portion of the grade.

Performance-based grading is the fairest to your students. As much of your grade as possible should be based on objective, measurable criteria.

Of course, some subjects lend themselves less well to objective criteria than others — composition is one excellent example. But there are methods for applying subjective criteria fairly to all students: Rubrics and anchors, for example. So even if you teach a subject whose evaluation is inherently subjective, you can with some extra work evaluate your students fairly.

Assess your students’ performance frequently. Don’t fall into the “It’s just a ten-point quiz” trap. All assessments are important. Assess your students’ performance frequently, with quizzes and exams, and get results back to them as quickly as possible. It’s only fair that your students know how they are doing, after all. And the more you assess your students, the more opportunities they have to improve their performance.

Critique yourself — harshly. Every time you assess your students, you give yourself an opportunity to assess your own performance. It’s unrealistic to expect all of your students to do well, but if the curve on that last exam you gave is low, assume something you’re doing is not working. “Lisa’s just not a good test-taker” may to some extent be true, but for you, it’s nothing more than an excuse. Take responsibility for your job — getting your students to learn the material. If what you’re doing isn’t working, then stop doing it — even if you are ideologically wedded to doing it (hint: education isn’t about you or your ideology).

Classes gel as entities. It’s bizarre, but different classes develop different class “personalities,” and some classes perform better than others — even if you are doing the same thing in all the classes. Some classes are quiet. Some classes are participatory. Some classes are downright rowdy. Some classes have normal curves. Some classes have high curves. Some classes have low curves.

When assessing your own performance, take this into account. If, say, you’re teaching four classes and you’re doing the same thing in all four, and if your students’ scores are good in three of them but not so good in the fourth, you have evidence that what you’re doing is working.

Never try to con your students. Students are smarter than you think. If one of your students asks a question and you don’t know the answer, don’t try to weasel your way out of the question, and worse, don’t give him a fake answer. Say you don’t know, you’ll look it up, and get back to him — and then do it as soon as possible and give him the answer. And do it in front of the class.

You have to earn your students’ respect, and there’s no reason students should respect you if you are dishonest, nor do you have any right to expect your students to be honest if you try to con them.

Be fair, straightforward, and consistent. Set your policies and grading system, explain them clearly to your students (you’ll probably have to remind them multiple times), and never deviate from either. This is the other side of honesty. If you tell your students that you will not accept late assignments (or whatever your policy is), then turn around and accept late assignments, you demonstrate to your students that you are dishonest. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Always.

And always treat students the same, even if Mary Jo really annoys you. Fairness is crucial. If you give Jimmy a break, you have to give all of your students the same break (remember that before you give in). Anything else is unacceptable and unprofessional.

Stick to your topic. This shouldn’t need to be said, but these days, it isn’t said enough. The school isn’t about you, or your ideology, or your idea of “social justice,” or “diversity,” or “conscienceness-raising.” The school is about learning, as in the topic you’re supposed to be teaching. If you’re throwing out gratuitous political comments, you’re wasting time and not doing your job. If you’re trying to think of ways to weave your agenda into your topic, not only are you being a narcissistic jerk, but you know what you’re doing is wrong — otherwise, you wouldn’t be trying to sneak it in.

If you teach math, stick to math. It’s that simple. There’s too little time to get through the material as it is without wasting valuable time just to make you feel better about yourself.

Treat your students with respect.

Students are people, and people respond in kind to the way you treat them. If you treat your students with respect, they will be more likely to treat you and their peers with respect. If you treat them like children, they will behave like children.

This is the way you earn your students’ respect.

Be an authority figure — and set an example. Like it or not, you are an authority figure. With authority comes responsibility, the responsibility to set an example for your students. Hold yourself to the highest ethics and morals, or find another job.

I had a colleague who would come to work drunk, and go to her classes and tell her students about her latest one-night stand. I suppose she mistakenly thought her students would find her “cool” and relevant.” The reality is that students thought she was a drunken whore and an idiot, and viewed her with disdain. When a sorority sponsored a “Most Hated Faculty Member” poll, she won, and couldn’t figure out why. She gave out As like candy. She talked about her sex life every day. Why would the students dislike her?

How clueless is that?

You are your students’ teacher. You are not their friend, or their therapist. Students look to you for guidance, not hugs or gold stars.

That doesn’t mean be a pompous jerk, nor does it mean don’t be friendly with your students. It does mean that you’re not their peer, and they know it. You need to know it as well.

Also — and this really needs to be said — be careful what you say, and where. If you blog, either do so anonymously, or walk on eggshells when you blog. Don’t put up nude pictures of yourself on MySpace (do I really need to say that?) or talk in the halls about evil homosexuals.

It’s not a matter of PCness, or not offending anyone. It’s a matter of decorum and professionalism. Do not curse in front of students. Do not tell rude jokes in front of students. Do not cut down others — particularly students — in front of students. Act like a professional, not a student.

My students have no idea what my politics are. I never bring politics into the classroom, and never discuss politics with current students. Never. I suggest you adopt the same policy. And here’s another suggestion: Teaching your students by example to steal from others is not ethical behavior, nor is it setting a good example.

Your students are paramount. If you place your salary or your television show above your students, you have no business teaching. As long as you represent the school in a classroom, your students are your top priority.

Good luck. We need as many good teachers as we can get.

This crap really honks me off:

Word to the wise if anyone in the GOP cares to listen: When your own partisans (such as myself) are actively rooting for Republican Congressmen to be arrested, you’ve got a problem.

Get rid of him. Now.

God knows I don’t want to take issue with the Club for Growth — I think they and the Republican Study Committee are two of the most important and valuable organizations today. And God also knows I just hate pork, but pork isn’t the only important issue. I can hear Pat Toomey and Andrew Roth protesting now, but sometimes, pork isn’t even a very important issue, or at least it isn’t as important as other issues.

The issue here in Pennsylvania now (at least as far as I’m concerned) is Fast Eddie’s latest attempt to extort money from the entire state to prop up Philadelphia’s failed, piece of sh*t, public transportation system. What does he want to do?

He wants to make I-80 a toll road.

I am not opposed to toll roads. If Tony Soprano Ed Rendell wanted to make I-80 a toll road to raise money to repair roads and bridges throughout the state, it would be a different issue. But Fast Eddie couldn’t care less about anything but Philadelphia.

Speaking of, listen up, Pennsylvania. In Indiana, an Indianapolis mayor has zero chance of ever being elected governor. There’s a reason Hoosiers won’t elect an Indianapolis mayor as governor (senator or representative, yes, but governor, no). Are you catching on?

Back to the point. It’s not just a toll. Fast Eddie’s proposed toll on I-80 would be the most expensive toll in the entire United States of America.

Note that I-80 doesn’t come anywhere near Philadelphia. This means that those who will be paying out the *ss for Philadelphia’s failed, piece of sh*t public transportation system don’t use it. And those who do use it, won’t be paying a penny for it.

Liberals love going on about fairness, but what’s fair about that? Nothing. It’s as far from fair as you can get. In fact, the only fairness at all would be if those who directly benefit from the system (and the “directly” is there because otherwise, you’d be open to six degrees of separation) pay for it. Nobody else.

So why aren’t those who use it paying for it? For that matter, why isn’t Philadelphia — the largest city in the state — paying for it? What’s that? They don’t have any money? Really? Why not? And what makes Fast Eddie think we have the money to pay for it?

Did anybody even wonder why the public transportation system failed? Did anybody even wonder why nobody’s using it, or why it’s falling apart? No? Given the love bureaucrats have for setting up committees and study groups, don’t you think it’s just, well, bizarre that nobody seems to be interested in what’s wrong with the system in the first place?

We all know what’s wrong with it, don’t we. The same thing that’s wrong with nearly every public transportation system in the United States. But that’s tangential.

You’re wondering why I brought up Pat Toomey, Andy Roth, and the Club for Growth, aren’t you? Here’s why.

Enter my representative, John Peterson (I gave a quick overview of his voting record here). The Club for Growth gave Peterson a 0 on the 2007 RePORK Card. Despite being a Club for Growth member, I was neither surprised nor outraged.

Peterson represesnts the largest district in Pennsylvania, which spans the center of the state almost all the way from the southern to the northern borders. It’s a heavily agricultural district, and I-80 runs right through it.

Peterson may be low-key, but he aggressively defends the interests of his agricultural district — and I’m afraid this includes pork (mostly agricultural subsidies). Yes, I don’t like it much (in fact, every time I buy dairy in Pennsylvania, it really honks me off), but I understand it.

Peterson is certainly no RINO. He recently became rather prominent in the state (very unusual for him) by taking on Rendell and the Philly machine by proposing an amendment to the House Transportation Appropriations Act that would block the use of federal funds to implement tolling I-80.

Hear! Hear! After I did my Happy Dance, I called his office to thank him. And yesterday, I got a letter from him in response, a two-page letter.

I hope Representative Peterson doesn’t mind my quoting a couple of passages here. Pork, sure, and I don’t like that at all, but folks, this man has my vote (bold is mine, underlining is Representative Peterson’s).

The tolling of I-80, under Act 44 — passed by both the state legislature and signed by Governor Rendell — will have a disastrous economic affect not only on the 17 counties I represent, but on Pennsylvania as a whole. Under the Governor’s plan, the round trip toll for I-80 will start at $51 for a car and $308 for an average truck and increase to $66 and $400. These would be the highest rates in the country. By this plan, small community transit systems will receive scraps in comparison to what mass transit in other parts of the Commonwealth will collect.

[ . . . ]

The recent collapse of the I-3 West Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota sent an alarm throughout the nation regarding our backlog of maintenance for distressed bridges and roads. This horrific accident has bolstered my efforts to see that federal highway funds are used to fix roads and bridges, not bail out bloated mass transit programs. In 2005, the Pennsylvania delegation fought a hard battle in Congress to ensure the Commonwealth would receive $1.15 in federal funding for every dollar put toward our highways. This figure is among the highest in the country.

Two pages, and not a form letter. This is one incumbent, pork or not, I want to stay in Congress.

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General Patton on the GWOT (hat tip to Liberty Film Festival for the much appreciated clip):

This is no surprise:

To thunderous acclaim from the liberal intelligentsia

That’s enough to tell you it’s pure BS right there. Oh. Sorry. I got sidetracked. Here’s the rest:

To thunderous acclaim from the liberal intelligentsia, a team of feminist icons — including Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda — last year launched a women-run radio network. The mainstream media dutifully parroted press releases describing the launch as a “breakthrough” for women in the male-dominated world of talk radio.

The Boston Globe, for example, proclaimed that “GreenStone gives women an outlet.” Business Week described the venture as “Talk Radio Minus The Testosterone.”

Last Friday, GreenStone Media signed off for good.

And Van Helsing says:

Evidently programming that “carefully was designed by feminist experts to appeal to female tastes” appealed to no one but hardcore moonbats whose point of view already saturates television and is available on the radio via NPR, courtesy of our tax dollars. GreenStone was picked up by only eight affiliates, none in major markets.

GreenStone president and CEO Susan Ness whimpers that “women need a voice on commercial radio” and “radio needs women’s voices.”

Hell, not even moonbats want to hear other moonbats whine — and that’s all they ever do. They want to hear themselves whine, but that’s different. And as VH points out, there are plenty of successful women on talk radio:

• Laura Ingraham is on 340 stations and draws an audience of over 5 million.
• Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s audience is larger still.
• Martha Zoeller, Janet Parshall, and Tammy Bruce are all doing fine.
• Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity don’t have to be women to provide programming that millions of women want to hear.

But of course, these are all conservatives.

Right. They’re not incessantly going on about “wimmin’s issues,” or in everyday English, they aren’t whining.

But it’s also a breathtaking ignorance of the market. First, they believe everybody wants to hear them whine and sing praises to their private parts, because they believe everybody is like them. Second, they swallow the “If you build it, they will come” myth, which is closely related to the “Information wants to be free” myth.

The first problem arises from the liberal bubble. Liberals are scared to death of conservatives. Liberals only associate with other liberals. That not only makes them all even more liberal, but creates the false impression that the world is like one of Professor EarthWomb Carlson-Nieffert-Zomby’s English composition class discussions. They’re starting off with a false impression of the market.

Then, there’s that “open source mentality” thing, the “Build it and they will come” balderdash. Marketing exists for a reason. Not, mind, that there would have been much of a market — after all, feminuts have NPR for all their mental masturbation needs. But if they want to further exploit that market, then they need to aggressively advertise, and wheel and deal to get sponsors to get on more stations (which will get them more sponsors, etc.)

Oops. That last sentence should have been in the past tense, since like Air America (and for the same reasons) they went under.

I now really, really, really detest Firefox. I want to either downgrade to 1.5.x, or move to another browser, one that’s supposed to be what Firefox used to be: Fast and stable, not a CPU hog, and with no intrusive “Your files have all downloaded!” popups or automatic updates.

So far today, Firefox has frozen seven times — you know, when there’s supposedly a “script” running on the page. On one of those pages, there was nothing but text. On another, there was no damned script. I know, because I authored that page.

I have had to close and rerun Firefox three times today because it was eating up 100% of my CPU.

And don’t point me to any of those lame about:config hacks. I shouldn’t have to edit a damned thing to make the application stable. Firefox has become Netscape, with feature creep. It’s big and bloated and unstable, and I hate it.

Can I downgrade? If not, what else is out there?

I’m really missing Lynx right about now.

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Partly inspired by Ed Driscoll (follow the links — there’s good reading there), and partly inspired by watching Over the Hedge this morning, I thought I’d check IMDB to see for myself. I divided movies into two categories: Moonbatty "message" movies, and non-moonbatty, non-"message" movies. In order to qualify as a moonbatty movie, the film had to display a lack of moral absolutism or left-wing historical revisionism in some fundamental way. So I picked Angelina Jolie’s recent stinker, A Mighty Heart, a movie that attempts to tackle the beheading of Daniel Pearl without going near the beheaders (cultural sensitivity, ya know); George Clooney’s Syriana, a leftwing fantasy that creates a non-existent evil corporate America exploiting all those poor oppressed Arabs; Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German (starring George Clooney), which attempts to paint a sympathetic portrait of Nazis suffering at the hands of evil American invaders; Steven Spielberg’s Munich, which attempts to paint a sympathetic portrayal of Palestinian terrorists; World Trade Center, Oliver Stone’s attempt to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 without coming near the terrorists responsible; and Alexander (also Oliver Stone), starring Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, and Val Kilmer, which tried to portray a non-violent, politically correct, inclusive, sensitive, Alexander the Great. Note that all of the above movies had either to have a big name star for box office draw, or a big name director. I intended to include critic reactions, but that’s too messy: Some like a movie, while others do not. I also did not include any major cult movies in either category (like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings).

So here are the moonbatty movies, along with their US box office gross revenues:

In order to qualify as non-moonbatty, movies had to display no moral relativism or major historical revisionism. To give the moonbatty movies as much of an advantage as possible, I did not require that non-moonbatty movies have big name directors or actors to draw viewers to the theater. Here is the list: