What’d I say? Emphasis mine, of course.
I’m not going to repeat the name until it’s confirmed but Carl Cameron’s interviewing a kid on Fox who says the suspect is a friend of the family and that the guy’s been having mental problems lately, allegedly complaining that the government is planting bugs in his head.
And abducted by UFOs, no doubt. A Kucinich groupie. Or a R0n P4ul groupie.
“Is the youtube debate the worst thing to happen to American political discourse since the invention of the one-minute soundbyte?”
Yes. Worse, idiots like Youtube’s Commisar for Politics and News are allowed to vote.
Just saw this:
A man claiming to have a bomb walked in to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign offices Friday and took hostages, police and witnesses said.
The man had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to himself, said Bill Shaheen, a top Clinton state campaign official. He took two hostages, both volunteers, and released others, Shaheen said.
WNBC-TV in New York quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying the man wanted to speak with Clinton.
Probably a disaffected Kucinich groupie.
Duncan Hunter wrote a little note to Hillary:
Regarding the “plant”, retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr, that you sent to ask me the question at the CNN-YouTube debate last night in Florida …
Send more!!!
Merry Christmas,
Duncan Hunter
And you wonder why I refuse to watch debates? The Democrats are scared to death of anything but softball questions, so they won’t debate on FNC, and all of the questions are planted. The Republicans aren’t scared of hardball (read: substantial) questions so they debate on CNN, but get nothing but planted questions (and idiotic ones, at that) from Democrats. And there are still way too many candidates to have a debate.
Call me when there are two, at most three, in both parties. Until then, no debates for me.
About that stats bootcamp. I will have to write an Excel (and Access) bootcamp first, and there’s a problem: Office 2007 has a radically different user interface than all previous versions (yeah, I know all about the Excel 2007 bugs, but I really love the interface — and Microsoft has finally added averageif(), after all these years, so no more sumif(range,”>0″)/countif(range,”>0″), thank God. Why it took them this long, I do not know.)
So it won’t go up immediately, especially since I only used Excel 2007 in the lab sitting in on a friend’s class, haven’t used Access 2007 yet, and won’t until I install it this weekend. And then, of course, figure out where everything in Access is, if it’s changed as much as Excel.
SPSS is SPSS.
I’ll still gear it for the math-anxious (I figure if you’re not math anxious, then you either know it, or you could easily pick up a stats book and absorb it). But unlike the present version, it will focus not only on how to read, interpret, and judge statistics, but also how to run statistical analyses (and which ones in which circumstances, etc.)
But Access/Excel 2007 bootcamp has to go up first (course, you could get SPSS, but most won’t). One of these days, I’m going to get a copy of SAS, which I’ve never used.
The existing version, by the way, is here (and incomplete, since I did it mostly to avoid being annoyed by people who didn’t know ANOVA from Diet Coke). Follow the links at the bottom of the page.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
I’m going to be reorganizing and expanding my stats for social sciences pages. The pages I have posted were written for people who needed to understand stats in journal articles, but did not give the necessary information to use stats in their own research. So I’m going to be rewriting them, with how to do tests in SPSS and Excel (I may have to put an Excel bootcamp online — most people have used it, but most are not power users). Anyway, here is the tentative list of sections:
It’s not clear whether the section on research design should be at the beginning or the end. I’ll have to think about that.
Whattaya think? Waste of time? Good idea?
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
We’re driving back tomorrow, so there is a big list of undones we need to do, somehow. So maybe more later, maybe not.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
Biscuits and gravy at Wee Willie’s!
I’m still asleep, but there’s an unsecured network, so I’m logged in. I don’t normally hijack other people’s connections, but when the advertised wi-fi isn’t …
I’ve noticed these differences before, of course, but I wanted to check again, to make sure I wasn’t imagining anything. But you can tell what state you’re in, almost from the minute you cross the state line, by looking at the surroundings — rather, the way people have settled.
Pennsylvania is mostly rural, although it’s sparsely populated. There are heavily populated rural areas, of course, like Lancaster County, but to an Indiana eye, farmhouses along the Turnpike are few and far between. There are instead lots of large dairy farms, far larger on average than Indiana farms. You see very few crops, but lots of cattle. But like Indiana, Pennsylvania isn’t very suburbanized (in fact, it may be less so than Indiana). You’re either in town, or surrounded by dairy farms.
You know you’re in Ohio the minute you cross the state line. There are stretches of strip malls along the interstate that, bizarrely, are just there, with no nearby communities. What is most striking, however, is the countryside. Technically, it’s rural, but it isn’t, really. You drive past acres and acres of huge yards, and you can see the tire lines from where everything has been mowed. Sometimes, you can see the million dollar homes, but usually not. When you get west of Dayton, you start seeing some obviously agricultural land, but there is more “yardage” than fields.
Indiana is a marked contrast, from the minute you pass Richmond on the state line. There are no mowed plots of countryside, but cornfields on either side of the road, all the way to Indianapolis. For every five miles you drive on the interstate, you pass ten or so farmhouses on either side of the interstate. Small family farms dot Indiana from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River, in sharp contrast with both Ohio and Pennsylvania, and every five miles or so, there’s a small town, with a population of anywhere from 200 to 2,000 (in Indiana, 20,000 is not a small town). You see markedly more agricultural vehicles (trucks and yes, tractors) than you do in either Ohio or Pennsylvania, and noticeably fewer, uh, “urban cowboy” pickups (as opposed to pickups that are obviously used as agricultural vehicles — you can tell because they’re not customized, and most are muddy, old, and various degrees of beaten up). Vehicle inspections in Indiana? Are you kidding? That would put an unjustifiable economic stress on all of the farmers that make up the bulk of Indiana’s population.
About ten miles north of Bloomington is the glacier line. North of the line, Indiana is a plains state, like South Dakota. You can see for miles in any direction. South of the line, Indiana is hilly (and when you get just north of the Ohio River, the hills are quite high and steep, and are called the knobs). You still see cornfields south of the line, but they’re smaller, and you see more farmhouses, because the farms are smaller. You also see lots of livestock farms — and God forbid that you should live near a hog farm.
Bloomington itself is Berkeley-Lite, much like Madison, except that it’s smaller (the town, not the campus), but like State College, it’s surrounded by, well, Indiana. Drive five miles, and it’s a different galaxy. If you live here, you can escape the insane, drooling leftists by moving out of town. However, if you want to escape the leftists, but live in suburbia, you’re out of luck. Bloomington, like State College, is pretty much either in town, or in the country, with not a lot of in between.
Anyway, they’re differences that I find interesting.
You can view the entire collection (when I’m done taking pics and uploading them) by clicking the pic below. You can see the full-size photos I’m posting here by clicking on them.
We’re staying right across from Steak and Shake — thank God! This pic is taken from the parking lot right outside the motel. You don’t know about Steak and Shake? An Indiana chain, with great cheeseburgers steakburgers with cheese, but most importantly, milkshakes! Like the ad says, “Why do we call them milkshakes? Because we can.” God, I miss Steak and Shake. That’s where we got food after finally getting here.
We’re right next to — literally, right next to — La Charreada, a fajita palace, but not bad for the genre.
We used to live in this house, in Fritz Terrace (right next door to where the dogs are staying). It’s rather a nasty, ratty house, but it had a great back yard, with privacy fencing.
Then, we bought this house, about ten miles south of town in the country, a big (2600 square feet) ranch on a big plot. No neighbors. Just people who lived down the road (except for Southside Christian Church just across the road — and churches make good neighbors). So far, it’s the only house I’ve lived in that I really loved.
You can’t tell from the front, but the house extends in the back, with a finished walk-out basement, and a firepit I never got to use because, well, we moved to Pennsylvania.
Speaking of houses, here are my two favorite Bloomington houses. One is Victorian (with original windows), and the other is arts and crafts. Both are large houses for the types.
I’m not sure what this person was thinking, but note the license plate. Driving around in Bloomington with a Purdue plate could be seriously detrimental to one’s health — rather like driving around U of A with Auburn plates.
Bloomington has its quirks. Here’s one we used to drive past every day. Note the sign.
IU has the largest student union in the US, with a maze-like interior. A picture of the union? They don’t make wide-angle lenses that wide. Here are a few shots of parts, first two in the back, the last from one side. Like all of the other buildings on campus, every inch is Indiana limestone — like all of the memorials, monuments, and federal buildings in Washington DC:
The union is part of “old campus” (none of the original buildings from the 19th century are still there). Old campus was a WPA project. One thing I must say about IU, the campus and architecture are strikingly beautiful. Here’s Woodburn Hall:
Here’s where I worked when I was a grad student, first the front arch, then the courtyard behind:
It’s right next to the music school, IU’s biggest asset, although it’s a hybrid building — they added onto it, and it’s fairly ugly. The music school is IU’s largest academic unit, and there is no way to get all of it in one picture. Here is one of the ugly practice buildings across the street from where I worked, then two side shots of the music school:
Finally, here’s a picture of the Tudor Room inside the Union, where we ate Thanksgiving dinner.
>
I’m in the room, typing this up in notepad. No connectivity. After I’m sufficiently awake, I’ll shower, then head down to the dining room to post.
First, Minnie. She looked and acted fine, except that there was blood in her urine. The vet prescribed an antibiotic, but we’ll have our vet back in Centre County see her when we get back. But I’m hoping it’s just an infection that can easily be cleared up.
I drove down to Bedford yesterday and lunched with Mamacita and her husband (note to NYC Educator: We probably won’t go to Bean Blossom on this trip). We completely lost track of the time, and I hopped in the Explorer and drove back when I saw it was 4 o’clock. We lunched at Casa Brava, a fajita palace. Imagine my surprise (well, not so much) when we ate dinner at La Charreada next door and they had exactly the same menu, down to the pictures. In case you’re wondering, not at all bad for the genre. Burrito combination plates and things like that. A fajita palace.
The seedy motel, by the way, is sandwiched between La Charreada on the south and the Great Wall on the north. The Great Wall is a chop suey palace (none of them serves chop suey or chow mein anymore, but you know the genre, the Chinese equivalent of a fajita palace), and not at all bad for the genre. La Charreada seems now to be where the Bloomington Police go to eat; the Great Wall is, or used to be, where the county GOP movers and shakers lunched (I saw the prosecutor, several judges, and the chairman of the county party eating together every time I lunched there during the week).
The difference between the county party here in Indiana and the one back in Pennsylvania is that here, they’re active, and there, they’re in a coma. But you don’t want me to start ranting and raving, so I won’t. I’ll just say that I can’t believe I ever complained about the county or state party in Indiana, not after living in Pennsylvania.
The only thing in the pipes today is dinner with my brother and sister-in-law at one of Bloomington’s few really good restaurants. I probably won’t give you any details. Not that it won’t be pleasant, but nothing anyone would find interesting.
Bloomington is, of course, a ghost town now, because all of the students are gone for Thanksgiving break. That will change tomorrow, when they come back — well, tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday, because a lot of students feel they can extend their break. That’s why I always gave a big quiz on the first class day after break, to reward the students who had the initiative to, you know, come to class.
I seem to have left my camera at somebody’s house, so I can’t post pictures from yesterday.
Changed rooms, and yes, the TV works. The continental breakfast has a purpose, after all: We can connect to the lobby wi-fi here in the dining room. So here I am.
Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. We went to the Tudor Room in IU’s Student Union — the largest student union in the US, so large that freshmen customarily get lost the first couple of times they’re in the building. The food was good, although the gravy was sweet (turns out it was citrus-prune gravy, or some such nonsense). Went back to the house and visited with the six dogs (ours are two), and watched King Arthur, since I was the only one who’d seen it.
Today is pretty much wide open. I have a hot lunch date with Mamacita in Bedford.
I was going to say we had nothing else scheduled for the day, but we just got a call. Our dog is sick, and the vet is being called. We’ll probably go over there. She’s 11, so it could be something serious. Let’s hope not. That would put a damper on things.
Oh. Paul Poteet is the weather man. Saw his forecast this morning (that won’t mean anything to you unless you watch the Indianapolis stations).
It’s pretty amazing how little has changed here in over two years. You’d think there would be new businesses (there are a couple — the Burger King that mysteriously went out of business and stayed empty for almost a year is now a CVS, there’s a Hilton here now, and a square donut place has opened up in the Taco Bell/Chinese take-out place next to what used to be the Greyhound station on 10th and Walnut), but no. There’s a new parking garage on Atwater (they badly needed at least one more parking garage next to campus), and a new classroom building on 3rd (the south edge of campus), but Bloomington hasn’t grown at all. Of course, the local government is about as business-hostile as it can be, and violently opposed to any development, especially if it meant cutting down a few trees.
Anyway, we should shut down and head over to see about our dog.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
The traffic was godawful all the way here. The drive took ten-and-a-half hours (we’ve made it in just under eight). But at four o’clock, everything changed. Cornfields! Basketballs on signs! Purdue and IU license plates! Mud-splattered pickups and tractors! American flag and GOP bumperstickers! We must be in (clicky for biggy) . . .
Yup, cross the state line from Ohio and amazingly, everything changes (interesting, that — more later). The picture was taken at the rest area just west of Richmond, just over the state line, so it’s another two, two-and-a-half hours, but finally, Indiana.
The motel. Uh. Well, it’s “new” in the sense that it’s open under new management, and it’s cheap and convenient (right on north Walnut, maybe a mile from where the dogs are staying). But it’s a hole. I don’t mean there aren’t chocolates on the pillows.
The carpet is torn and way beyond filthy. The place hasn’t been painted in at least twenty years. There are obscene and not-so-obscene graffiti scratched in the elevator doors that have been there for years (Bobby Knight RULEZ! NCAA champs!)
The room is big, but filthy (the woman at the front desk said there would be no housekeeping today — had we seen the room, we might have asked how many years it had been since there was housekeeping). Still, as long as there’s beds, a TV, and wi-fi, right?
No wi-fi. Oh, there’s a network, and yes, I can connect, but there’s no ping and the connection is dead. I called, and the idiot at the front desk said, “Click on the icon-thingee and see if you can connect, we’ve had lots of trouble getting it to work in the rooms, but it works in the lobby!” Okay, then. I was too tired to go anywhere, so I flopped on the bed and clicked the power button on the remote.
No TV. Well, it wouldn’t come on. So I got up and managed to discover that there’s a short in the outlet. I plugged the TV into the other outlet and pressed the power button (on the TV) and it came on. So again, I flopped on the bed, and this time, clicked the channel button on the remote.
The remote doesn’t work. Could be the battery, of course, and I have about 30 AA batteries with me, but doncha know that the remote takes a AAA battery, and it seems to be taped into the remote.
So we have beds, but no wi-fi, and no TV. So far, the situation is unresolved.
Let’s see, what else. Oh. Remember those heat lamps that were really popular in bathrooms in the 70s? There are two in the bathroom here. The problem is that they’re hooked to the light, so there’s no way to turn the light on without turning on the heat lamps. So instead of wi-fi and TV, we get skin cancer.
There’s a complimentary “continental” breakfast, which means, of course, a stale sweet roll or donut and coffee so weak that it looks like tea. On the key cards, it says, “For room service, call Domino’s!”
But this isn’t New York or Pittsburgh. We lived here for thirty years. We know every road in the county, much less the town, and know where to get food. So complimentary breakfasts and room service aren’t a draw. Don’t need them, wouldn’t use them if we had them (actually, I never use room service or eat in hotel restaurants no matter where I am, but that’s another issue).
It’s almost 8:30 and I need to shower. We’ll then go to the lobby to: 1) see if there is, in fact, wi-fi there, and if so, 2) have them change us to a room where the TV works. If there’s no wi-fi in the lobby, we’ll have to switch to another motel.
Addendum: While packing back up (after shutting down), I discovered that I forgot to pack my shoes. So I have just the ratty, chewed up moccasins I drive in. It’s off to Wal-Mart for a cheap pair of shoes.
And obviously, the wi-fi in the lobby works.
Before I shut down, finish packing, and head out, the Carnival of Education will be at NYC Educator when it gets posted — at a decent hour, while I’m on the road. And speaking of NYC Educator, he and I were having a conversation about trolls. He’s been getting a lot of them lately, and what you may not know is that I get plenty of them. Here’s what I said to NYC Educator (you need to know, if you don’t already, that he’s a union man):
I have a policy. I don’t crap in other people’s yards. Now, I will take issue with an article on another blog if the reasoning or the data are bad, but I don’t do hit-and-runs. You can probably (and correctly) guess how I feel about unions, but you will notice that I have never “let it all hang out” on your blog.
I’ve had quite a few of those on mine. Usually, they end up in the moderation queue or Akismet catches them, and I delete them. I don’t care if somebody disagrees with me, but I do expect them to do so in a rational, calm, reasoned manner. Call me effete, but I tend to think civility a good thing.
Then, I got this in the queue today (I deleted the comment, but I’m going to post the whole thing, just to make the point):
A new comment on the post #4276 “My Ex-Students Are On Strike” is waiting for your approval
http://rightwingnation.com/2007/11/20/i-know-these-people/Author : Joe Momma (IP: 70.141.146.242 , 70.141.146.242)
E-mail : jjam@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=70.141.146.242
Comment:
Eat shit and die you freaking Bush loving asshole
Note that this was left on my article about the writers’ strike. The only thing in the comment that could be thought of as a topic is the President — the rest is just juvenile spewing. So do you see any reference, even tangential, to President Bush in that article? No? Neither do I.
I get these all the time. Like I said, if you want to disagree with me in a rational, reasonable manner, that’s great. But I will continue to delete all drive-by idiocy. If you want to demonstrate what a mouthbreathing infantile jackass you are, do it on your own blog.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
We’ll be on the road all day. I doubt that I’ll log in again until tomorrow morning, but we’ll see.
Hat tip to Say Uncle for the link to Sebastian (I read blogs in alphabetical order — I would have gotten to Sebastian next, but credit where it’s due): All three of Fast Eddie’s anti-gun bill went down in flames.
Guess you didn’t bang on that lectern hard enough, eh, Eddie? And speaking of, he says:
Don’t tell me it’s because our justice system is weak.
So why hasn’t Mumia been executed?
Moron.
The following general scenario is one of the most common during office hours:
“What can I do for extra credit?”
“Other than the online quizzes, nothing. Here, let me pull you up in the gradebook. Have you done the online quizzes?”
“Every one!”
I pull up the student’s record in the gradebook and look.
“You understand what the online quizzes are, don’t you? According to your record, you haven’t done one of them. They’re these,” I then pull up the quizzes in a browser.
“Oh, those. No, I haven’t done any of those. They’re only a point each.”
“They’re extra credit, the only extra credit available in this course.”
“Can I do them now?”
“No, you can only do them the week they are assigned. Once the week is up, the quiz for that week goes offline.”
“Can you make them available to me so I can do them?”
“No, we have no power to do that. They go offline automatically. Here, let’s see how you’re doing.”
Again, I look at the student’s record.
“You currently have an F. You did the first two projects, but you haven’t turned in any since.”
“I was really busy.”
“I see.”
“Can I do them now?”
“No, we accept no late assignments.”
“But you’re the teacher, can’t you make an exception?”
“No, because the gradebook is on a central server, and all of the grading is done automatically by program. I am shut out of editing anything, other than adding comments.”
“I have to pass this class.”
“To get a C, you’ll have to get 97% of the remaining possible points. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. Can’t I do something for extra credit?”
So the student hasn’t been interested in doing the work for the class, but when he figures out that he’s failing and won’t get into the business school, he suddenly wants extra credit. I am reminded of this all too frequent scenario by the writers’ strike.
Consider: Every season, we’ve been getting more shows with dialogue-free scenes, and those scenes have become longer and more frequent. You know what I’m talking about, those “musical interlude” scenes where the actors walk around and mug for the camera, scenes with no dialogue, scenes the writers didn’t write, because there’s nothing to write other than “mug here” or “put on Sunglasses of Justice here” or “set jaw and look intent here” or “look up into the camera as it zooms in here” or “twiddle thumbs to muzak here.” It started — rather, I first noticed it — with CSI: Miami, when there would be at least two muzak scenes of nothing but David Caruso (and the Sunglasses of Justice) mugging for the camera; then, to make them seem more substantial (I suppose), they would have several simultaneous content-free mugging-to-muzak scenes, on a split screen. But it’s not the only one. Cold Case, a show I have grown almost to despise (give me another season, and it will have me throwing things at the television), has more and more of these, except instead of David Caruso, it’s Lily and her one-eyed (disenfranchised! disempowered! oppressed!) cat, or her partner, whatever his name is, looking sad or intense or bored, all to muzak that the band can’t sell — that’s why you see those credits for the band. And when they do write, with remarkably few exceptions (Bones is a truly remarkable exception, speaking of), they give us crap like, “I always [insert dra-may-tic pause here as David Caruso puts on the Sunglasses of Justice and mugs for the camera] do the right [insert another dra-may-tic pause as he mugs again] thing, [insert yet a third dra-may-tic pause as the camera zooms in on Caruso and the Sunglasses of Justice] Mr. Parker.” Or we get a closeup of Delko with his lip trembling, looking like his poor feelings are hurt — accompanied by really awful muzak from a really awful band who can’t sell their muzak because it’s so bad — who then says, “You’re blaming the victim!” [zoom in on trembling lip and hurt expression here]
There’s good writing for you.
So we have writers who can’t be bothered to, you know, write, and can’t write when they try, and now, they’re on strike because they want more money. I’m sure these writers were my students, the ones who came in when they realized they were flunking and wanted extra credit. No doubt these writers went to public schools, where the teachers and administrators patted them on their heads, told them how bright and speshul they were (you know, to raise their self-esteem), and gave them all the extra credit macaroni art projects they asked for. Then, they got to my class and flunked, because, well, no, they don’t get to do all that macaroni art instead of the assigned work, and because they hadn’t done it, hadn’t learned the material, and because they couldn’t get into the business school, because they hadn’t learned the material and couldn’t pass the course, decided to become writers.
They must have. It’s the only thing that explains the parallels.
Strike, my *ss. Patco the morons, and hire some real writers. Maybe they’ll earn more money. If anything, the TV writers need to have their pay slashed. And enough with the extra credit macaroni art, teachers. How bad does television have to get before you stop it?
Ooooo, let’s fight global warming by drinking rat’s milk!
Note: I have never heard of this Heather Mills bimbo, but she has a nice SUV.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
Like I said, the electrical system has been going on the blitz for some time now, and today, I took it in to the dealership. Guess what? Not only did the windows work, but for the first time in six months, the rear wiper worked.
Hat tip to Freeborn John for this:
A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.
So does this give new meaning to “bisexual”? And how long will it be before the, er, new “bisexuals” have their own flag, and are demanding to be included in hate crimes laws?
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to here.
The electrical system in my Explorer has been gradually decaying. The back wiper hasn’t worked for months, but I only consider that to be a small problem. Yesterday while we were at Scott’s Farm eating those roast pork sandwiches with horseradish, the windows stopped working.
The snow is still pouring down, and my window is down.
We did stop by the Ford dealership and I have an appointment tomorrow at 1:00 to get it fixed before we drive to Indiana Wednesday. Thank God.
A Constitutional amendment I would support (there are very few of those).
I’ve read this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever linked to it. Why the gun is civilization.
I just took this picture about a half hour ago, looking out the front door. It’s still pouring down.
Click to biggify.
Contains spoilers, so click the more tag.
We did everything except Beowulf. There was no way to make the 12:00 show, so we’re going at 2:20.
I just got a Happy Thanksgiving call from Karl Rove. Anyway.
Remember this stand from the Grange Fair?
We drove up to Scott’s Farm and had a couple of those pork sandwiches for lunch. Mmmmm, good! Pork and horseradish.
Is there some reason most of the spam I get in my email queue is in German?
Off to run errands. Back this afternoon after Beowulf.
Beowulf, of course.
Wednesday we’re driving to Indiana for Thanksgiving (we’ll be returning the following Wednesday). I’m way past due for an oil change, so that has to happen today. We’ve been stocking up on jars of preserves at the Amish farmers market every week for gifts (the Thanksgiving trip has to double as a Christmas trip), so we need to hit the farmers market again this morning. Last weekend was the Biweekly Holy Pilgrimage to the Club of Sam’s, so we don’t need to do that, but we do need to hit Wal-Mart. Oh. And my printer ran out of ink yesterday, so we need to hit Office Depot (I hate Staples. Hate, hate, hate Staples. I’ve never been in the new one here, and I won’t.)
And I have maybe 25 papers to read, comment on, and return.
Maybe breakfast at the Waffle Shop, since the football game is away. Maybe not. Depends. Actually, maybe breakfast (for the first time) at the Bellefonte Waffle Shop — I want to go to that butcher and pick up some things to take to Indiana.
Wednesday blogging will, I predict, be nothing more than the customary free thread post, since we’ll be on the road for about ten hours. Ditto for the following Wednesday.
You saw the photo of Muslims and Christians putting the cross back on the dome at St. John’s in Baghdad.
St. John’s has opened.
Read Yon’s photo essay about the first Mass there — and what the Muslims want. You won’t see this in the NYT.
Those ultra-civilized, mega-sophisticated Euroweenies do it again: Pedophile allowed to work in kindergarten.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A convicted pedophile sentenced to do community service in a German kindergarten will return to court next week to face charges of abusing two children there, a regional prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
What could possibly go wrong, apart from the horrifyingly obvious?
But the real question is in the second paragraph (emphasis mine):
The man was allowed to work as a janitor at the Evangelical Kindergarten St Petri in Melle, near the northern city of Osnabrueck, because a court worker missed three prior pedophilia convictions on his record, said Alexander Retemeyer, spokesman for the Osnabrueck prosecutor’s office.
Three convictions for molesting kids? What was this POS doing out of prison?
Oh, that’s right. He was rehabilitated. How, uh, civilized. Gee, we should be more like these Euroweenies!
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to here.
It seems Nutter has already picked a police chief:
Mayor-Elect Michael Nutter announced Thursday, Charles H. Ramsey, former police chief in D.C., has been hired as the new Police Commissioner of Philadelphia.
Ramsey, a 57-year-old native of Chicago, started his career in his hometown and spent 29-years with the Chicago P.D. before taking a job in D.C. where he served as the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia from 1998 to 2006. While leading the Metropolitan P.D., Ramsey handled such high profile cases as the Chandra Levy investigation, the September 11 attacks and the D.C. sniper shootings.
Wait, I have to stop laughing. Now, I have to get my kleenex and dry my eyes. There, that’s better.
So the clueless dolts who work for Nutter and the equally clueless dolts who wrote this story trumpet this jackass’s triumphs, namely the Chandra Levy case (as Wyatt says, “Wow, how’d that work out for ya, Charles?” And 9/11? What, exactly, did the police chief of DC, one of the highest crime zones in the nation, do during 9/11? Anybody? But the one that makes my sides split — there I go laughing again — is the DC sniper shootings. That has to be in the list of top ten most incompetent police investigations of the last twenty years, but this bozo thinks it’s something to brag about.
Sorry, Wyatt. I know you have to work for him, so it’s not funny. But it is. It’s hilarious. No wonder Philly is such a mess, electing brain-dead idiots like this.
If you don’t follow Wyatt’s “True Detective Stories,” you don’t know what you’re missing. Here’s the latest. The laugh line:
So, let me get this straight. Someone can just accuse a person of a crime, and you lock them up?
You know, as long as I’ve been cooking, I should know better. No, I wasn’t nude, and no, I wasn’t frying chicken, but I was shirtless and browning a chuck roast for pot roast. I turned it over, and the grease splattered all over my belly.
Big red spots that are already swelling. Wonderful.
Europe is a toilet, and has been since long before 1776 (there’s a reason our ancestors came here), so for the most part, I really don’t give a flying frak about the Euroweenies or what they do or what they want — but the problem here is that they don’t want:
The French president’s confession that governments could not win popular votes on a “simplified treaty” - drawn up to replace the EU constitution rejected by his countrymen two years ago - was made in a closed meeting of senior Euro-MPs.
“France was just ahead of all the other countries in voting no. It would happen in all member states if they have a referendum. There is a cleavage between people and governments,” he said.
“A referendum now would bring Europe into danger. There will be no Treaty if we had a referendum in France, which would again be followed by a referendum in the UK.”
The comments confirm suspicions that the real reason why Britain, and all other EU countries, apart from Ireland, were refusing to hold popular votes was because governments were afraid they would lose them.
And this, my friends, is why the idea that Europeans are so much more “civilized” and “sophisticated” and “cultured” than we are is, and always has been laughable. Europe is a toilet because they’ve never been able to advance beyond feudalism — they have just replaced one set of liege lords for another. Now, I wouldn’t care much, except that this is nothing more than tyranny.
The only hope for civilization in Europe is in some of the ex-Soviet states, where living under the Soviet boot has taught them a powerful lesson about socialism dressed up as “human rights” and “progress.” We might as well flush France, Germany, Belgium and the rest of Western Europe now and get it over with. Sure, I’d like to visit Europe, but only after we drop the neutron bomb so there are no Euroweenies left.
Speaking of barbaric states, didn’t Saudi Arabia raise seven kinds of hell lately (at the UN, I believe) about “islamophobia”? I don’t think Saudi Arabia has any business complaining if somebody correctly terms them savages.
Hat tip for both to the Corner.
The day before yesterday, I had a long discussion with somebody about bringing back Latin into the high schools. I’ve also seen people on the web advocate the same idea. Here is an abbreviated version of my half of that conversation (the other person, by the way, had no good response to any of my points).
I took two years of Latin in high school (I was in the last class in my high school to be offered Latin). First-year Latin was the language; second-year Latin was reading mostly historical texts. I certainly benefited from those two years of Latin, but I have to disagree with those who want to bring Latin back into the schools.
There are three common arguments for including Latin in the curriculum. The first two are linguistic; the third is cultural and historical.
I will not take issue with the second or third argument. Both are incontrovertibly true. However, the purpose and form of education were both very different when Latin was being taught in schools than now. Then, most students were not being groomed to attend a university, and only college-track students studied Latin. There were also discrete course tracks in high school (college and vocational), whereas now, there is even opposition to grouping students by skill. So I do agree with both arguments, but I believe that the advantages would be outweighed by the increased workload and frustration of nearly a whole school of students’ studying Latin. I might also point out that the historical argument doesn’t require that Latin be taught. Students can read Cicero or Julius Caesar in English translation.
The first argument is ill conceived and based on largely ignorant assumptions. Grammatically, English bears little resemblance to Latin. There is very little (grammatically) to be learned from Latin that bears any relevance to English. Actually, there is very little to be learned from Latin grammatically that has any relevance to its descendant Romance languages.
I’m a syntactician. I love grammar. But grammar isn’t a monolith. “Learning grammar” is, as most understand it, a meaningless exercise (unless you’re a linguist, and then, a syntactician). English grammar — that is, the way English works — is, for example, very similar to Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian grammar, and very unlike Latin, Spanish, French, or Italian grammar.
I not only love grammar, but am a strong proponent of teaching grammar. But teaching the grammar of a dead language whose grammar bears very little resemblance to English grammar is pointless when we could be teaching English grammar by — wait for it — teaching English grammar, is it not?
I’ve always been mystified by the idea that we should learn grammar by studying some other language. Why, exactly, do we need another language in order to learn grammar? The grammar with the most relevance and importance to English speakers is English grammar, so why teach them another language just to teach them grammar? It makes no sense.
As this applies to teaching Latin, studying Latin grammar is the basic reason so many English speakers are ignorant of English grammar, and I refer here not to people who cannot distinguish a noun from a verb, but pedants who mistakenly believe themselves to be English grammar experts. Think of all of those non-rules which have never had anything to do with the English language, such as “Thou shalt not end a sentence with a preposition.” They are utter nonsense and always have been utter nonsense, and nearly all came about because people were trying desperately to apply Latin grammar to English, a Germanic language no more closely related to Latin than Sanskrit or Irish Gaelic.
The day before yesterday, when I was having this discussion, the other person said that if people studied Latin, they would understand case and wouldn’t abuse “whom.” Well no doubt, but it seems to me, at any rate, that this fails a cost-benefit analysis. Abusing “whom” (and that ignorant coinage “whomever,” which makes me want to break things every time somebody says or writes it) irritates me as much as anyone, and more than most, but why teach students Latin for a year to stop it? Why not just teach students how to use “whom” in English, which would take at most one-thousandth the cost, time, energy, and frustration?
But if we are going to teach students grammar by teaching another language, then Latin is a very poor choice. German would be vastly superior. German still has a productive case system, like Latin, and is a great deal more like English than Latin. Examples? How about what we call phrasal verbs in English, whose correspondents in German are separable prefix verbs? Latin has absolutely nothing similar, and phrasal verbs are an integral part of English. Better yet, why not Anglo-Saxon (Old English)? English speakers would learn a great deal more about their native language by studying either than by studying Latin (and Anglo-Saxon has historical advantages that German lacks, although both offer etymological advantages into our native English vocabulary).
And why do students need to learn case? English has two nominal cases, common and possessive, and three pronominal cases, common, objective, and possessive. Why teach a language with four or more fully-developed nominal cases? Doesn’t this seem like overkill, unless students are going to become linguists?
You’re about to mention that many students will study foreign languages. But let’s look at an inventory of those languages. The major European languages are (in no particular order, other than that in which they pop into my head) Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Russian. Add Portuguese, if we consider South America, and as long as we’re considering other continents, let’s add Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese for Asia.
German and Russian both have fully-developed nominal case systems (I have already pointed out the superiority of German to Latin, and few students study Russian). Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian have no more case than English does. Studying Latin specifically does not offer these students any advantage. Latin has absolutely nothing in common with any of the Asian languages. Arabic, you say? Arabic is a case language, but Latin certainly won’t offer any insights. Arabic isn’t even distantly related, and the case system is entirely different (I studied a year of Arabic). The same is true of Hebrew. And again, why not learn about case when you study Arabic, Hebrew, or Russian? Why study German in order to learn about strong and weak verbs, when students can study English and learn about them (and English, like all Germanic languages, definitely still has strong and weak verbs)? Why learn about strong and weak declensions, since English lost them hundreds of years ago?
I’m not saying students shouldn’t study Latin — far from it. I am saying that students shouldn’t study Latin in order to learn about English. It’s like taking apart a jet engine in order to learn how to fix your car. Most of what you learn taking apart the jet engine doesn’t help you with your car engine.
While coordinating that writing program, I had a great deal of contact with English composition people, both face-to-face and electronic. I’m sorry if I sound cynical, but the main reason most English composition people who insist that there is no reason to teach grammar take that position because they couldn’t tell an adjective from an adverb, a noun clause from a noun complement clause, or a participle from a gerund (the same holds for “fuzzy math” advocates). I suppose if you believe that students “own their own grammar” and Standard English doesn’t exist, then there is no reason to teach English speakers grammar. I have always wanted to put one of those English composition people in an ESL writing class, however. There is no way to teach non-native speakers how to write in English without a grammatical understanding of English. And I’m not necessarily talking about correcting grammatical errors (which really doesn’t work, by the way, because they keep making the same errors over and over). I’m talking about referring to the text. Grammar is a large part of the language we use in order to talk about what we and our students write.
But the grammatical advantages of studying Latin are so few, and are so heavily outweighed by the disadvantages, that there is no justification for teaching Latin just to teach grammar. It’s a bad idea and a worse waste of resources, particularly when students are coming out of schools barely being able to read at a sixth grade level and are unable to calculate a 15% tip without a calculator.
Good intention. Bad idea.
The best English grammars that have been written, by the way, were both written by George Curme.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
Comment or trackback, as long as you link to this post.
Previous free threads are here.
