Since Boomershoot I’ve been far too busy at work to post much of anything. I hope to change that soon. But in the meantime, Joe Huffman kindly pointed out that Matthew (Triggerfinger) posted this video of me discussing my specialty pistols at Boomershoot 2009. I’d forgotten that Matthew made it. Thanks, Matthew!
And it’s in HD! (Click the little “HD” in the video toolbar below to watch in high-def.) I’m lookin’ pretty good for turning 40 today, wouldn’t you say? Of course you would.
First, why are GM, Chrysler (but not Ford) cars going to be crap in the near future? Here’s why:
It’s called CAPITALism for a reason, after all.
…over the last 2 decades, firms are more likely to use debt than equity when relying on external financing. If creditors get tired of getting screwed, the Chrysler debacle and the looming repeat at GM may mark a major shift in the ability of American business to finance operations and growth.
…the government ended up ripping players it needs to play in the future for the success of its programs.
Like most bullies, the Obamabots seem unable to realize that their conduct may have long-term consequences.
Pondering all this, it occurs to me that the single most patriotic thing one could do right now, if one is in the market for a new car, is to buy a Ford.
Read the whole thing.Then read this:
Just a taste of the ideas of the father of modern US Education
The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. Indeed, almost the only measure for success is a competitive one – in a bad sense of that term – a comparison of results or in the examination to see which child has succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating, the maximum of information.
John Dewey – The School and Society
Or, to paraphrase: One student learning faster than the rest is a threat to the teacher and the class structure. Teach the student only what he “needs” to learn to fit into society. While doing so, make learning so abhorrent to him that he will refuse to strike out on his own to learn that which he doesn’t “need” for societal integration. Such excessive learning will create an unpliable citizen.
Apparently, the Seattle School District doesn’t believe that most students will need to learn higher math functions
With the program adoption, Seattle Public Schools will move away from its integrated math curriculum and standardize its math classrooms by using just one program.
The controversy surrounded Key Curriculum’s Discovering Mathematics series for algebra, advanced algebra and geometry, which officials describe as using an inquiry-based learning method. In a nutshell, the series focuses on helping students uncover math concepts on their own instead of laying out rules for memorization.
Instead of “rules for memorization”, the students get to sift through the lab book, searching for the rules of algebra and geometry and then figure out a way to memorize them themselves.
Lovely.
The state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has called the Discovering series “mathematically unsound.” A state Board of Education report states, about the series, “Students learn to solve interesting problems but not to understand algebra.”
The education board also said the Discovering series places too much emphasis on “pictures of graphs” instead of the algebraic equations that go with them.
But other mathematicians, contracted by the state, have said the opposite — that the Discovering series indeed is mathematically sound and is effective for teaching students with a wide range of learning styles.
“It’s kind of a case of dueling experts,” de la Fuente said.
In its study, the OSPI ended up choosing the Discovering series as its second choice, behind a program published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All of the OSPI’s recommendations, including the Discovering series, align with the state’s educational standards, it said.
The Seattle schools Board of Directors on Wednesday only had the power to approve or reject the Seattle math committee’s recommendation. The committee worked for about six months, combing through 20 textbooks until settling on three finalists. It then came to a consensus on the Key Curriculum and Addison-Wesley textbooks.
“I believe that the Discovering texts have (a) sufficiently broad approach to allow a range of teaching,” said board Director Peter Maier, who voted for the adoption.
A range so wide that no one will learn, unfortunately.
You can’t “make math fun” enough that most students are going to want to learn it. Making its concepts more vague, thereby causing the student to sit for hours in the classroom, confused and frustrated, will only fail the stated objective of a school: To teach.
Board President Michael DeBell previously said he was not satisfied with the Discovering textbooks because they can’t be used as well as other options as reference materials at home. He voted against the math committee’s recommendation.
Most people who gave public testimony at recent board meetings were widely opposed to the Discovering series. Many said it teaches “fuzzy math” and criticized it for departing from teaching methods that have been used for centuries.
“The effort to reform math into something it is not is failure,” Seattle resident Kate Martin said. “And SPS is getting on that train.”
Catherine Costello, the only person to give testimony in favor of the Discovering series, said she feels it promotes open communication in the classroom and values students as valid thinkers.
When it comes to complex mathematical theorems, what students “think” doesn’t matter. Mathematics is, quite literally, a Zero Sum game. You either know its rules or you don’t. You either solve the problem or you don’t.
“Discovering has a progressive, egalitarian focus,” said Costello, the mother of a freshman at Nathan Hale High School. “The direction is to teach both ideas and skills.”
Not everyone is equally curious or equally intuitive, Ms. Costello. You’re high school freshman child is not going to discover a revolutionary new shortcut to solving algebraic equations while sitting in Row Two, Desk Four if he/she doesn’t have a groundwork to jump off from.For millennia, people as smart as Alfred Einstein have been fiddling with Algebra and Geometry, using its lessons to send people to the moon and machinery to Mars and beyond.
Judging from the attitude of the Seattle School Board’s ideas about instruction, as well as the District’s latest test scores, Little Billy/Suzie will be lucky if their brains don’t melt like shit out of their ears while attempting to convert American SAE to Metric with a pencil and paper. None of them is going to win the Nobel Prize in Mathematics before graduation.
I think I’m going to have to include a second quote today, this time from a local Mathematics Education blog
Seattle has chosen to mathematically disable the children for the next decade by using the Discovering Series from Key Curriculum Press.
Typical nonsense triumphs once again.
Dan Dempsey – The Math Underground
I’m glad that I dont’ have children I’d be forced to abuse in this way, and glad I no longer live in Seattle. Getting proper change back from the buger flipping cashier is hard enough in Tacoma.
Ben at the Taxing Tennessee blog built a graph comparing the price of gasoline versus the cost of a single first class stamp from the USPS, baselined against inflation.
To quote Ben: “When gas prices rose last summer, Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-MI) introduced “The Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act,” which would make it a crime to “sell crude oil or gasoline at a price that is unconscionably excessive.” Shouldn’t we now investigate “unconscionably excessive stamp prices”? Monopoly has its privileges.”
And I’m sure that those privileges are given to them under the threat that they’ll flood the Earth with all of the glacial ice they’re melting by raising the cost of a first class stamp.
I mean, just look at this graph
Good heavens, they’ll kill us all if they’re not stopped!
Just to tie into David’s post below, here is a graph showing what The Obama Team said would happen to the unemployment statistics if the Stimupalooza did pass versus if it didn’t.
Well, the Stimupalooza did pass, thanks to three turncoat R’s, and, lo and behold, exactly what they said would happen if it didn’t is happening right now.
I’m sure than nary an “ooops” will be uttered by the White House, nor will it be asked for by the White House Press Corps.
Graph done by Geoff at the Innocent Bystanders blog, found via the AoSHQ
…according to David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy, and he’s right.
In Washington, we had a standardized test called the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). It tested at three different points during a child’s educational career, with the last test being at a 10th Grade Level and given to high school seniors. They needed it to graduate, but could take it as many times as they needed to.
First, it was all about how the Mathmatics section was “too hard”, so they ditched that requirement. The Governor Gregoire got her second term, the lay-about State Schools Superintendant got voted out of office, and the legislature got tired of hearing from the same parents wvery time the topic of testing came up, so the test is now no longer required to graduate, though they’re still taking the test this year, and the state schools officials will be making up a new test.
One that can probably be taken with crayons and require the kids to grade themselves.
President Obama is being told by numerous folks in the NEA that the current round of test we use to compare ourselves internationally are no good and that we need to ditch them if he is to “transform” the school system. And I have no doubt that he is listening.
How can the Obama administration get it right in education when its data are all wrong and its assumptions about its faulty data are flawed?
President Obama recently told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, “eighth-graders have fallen to ninth place.” That statistic comes from the 2008 round of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
It’s true. But there were 45 nations in the study so being in ninth place means being ahead of 36 other nations. More important, when TIMSS first began in 1996, American eighth-graders finished 28th among 41 nations. Over 12 years, we have “fallen” up 19 ranks. Many would consider that extraordinary progress.
The president also said, “Only one-third of our 13- and 14-year-olds are reading as well as they should.” This is a finding from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP reports results in terms of the percent attaining the basic, proficient and advanced levels.
It is true that only about one-third of American 13- and 14-year-olds reach the proficient level. Is this awful? One study asked, How many students in other countries would reach this level? The answer for Sweden was about one-third. Sweden scored higher than any of the other 35 nations in the study.
Yay! We’re almost, though not quite, Average!
To paraphrase a Lewis Black skit: “Before President Obama was in charge, our schools were shitty, shitty, shitty. Now, they’re only farty, stinky, poopy!”
If they don’t like the results showing that our nation’s kids isn’t learning, then, by golly, they’ll change that damnable test out and replace it with something that shows their results in a better light.
I’ll now be congratulating them because they did something well.
For the second consecutive year, Seattle high schools claimed the top two spots at this weekend’s Essentially Ellington Festival in New York, the nation’s premier high-school jazz-band contest.
Seattle’s Garfield High School placed first and Roosevelt High School was second. The 1-2 order was reversed last year, with Roosevelt on top.
“We are enjoying the moment,” said Clarence Acox, reaching by phone in New York Sunday night, just after the announcement of Garfield’s win.
“We’re standing right in front of Jazz at Lincoln Center taking pictures with the trophy,” said the longtime band director. “It never gets old.”
Garfield’s victory was its third, tying a record Roosevelt set in 2008 and furthering the Seattle schools’ dominance at Ellington. West Coast schools began going to Ellington in 1999. Roosevelt and Garfield have each won three times since then; no other school has won twice.
On Sunday afternoon, Essentially Ellington-presenter Jazz at Lincoln Center invited the top three bands — based on judging of their performances earlier in the weekend — to take the stage with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.
A big hats-off to the Seattle School District in general, as well as Garfield High School and Roosevelt High School in particular. Congratualtions are definitely in order. Good luck next year as well!.
Is that The Administration and its people didn’t read the fine print.
The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company’s new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.
According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.
The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.
As a result, the long-simmering argument over U.S. manufacturers expanding production overseas — normally arising between unions and private companies — is about to engage the Obama administration.
The only other option is that President Obama’s people told the unions and the bosses took the deal anyway, willing to keep their dues-base stagnant, essentially giving their members the finger. And after all, why not; Our bailout cash is keeping the pension fund afloat.
Hope AND Change, all in one deal.
Mother’s Day 2009 is a bit strange for me as yesterday I took The Mom to Seattle’s Pier 66 where she caught the first cruise of the season to Alaska. I wished her a premature Mother’s Day before I left, but that was about all I was able to do for her until she gets back.
So have a happy day with your mom or wife or both today, I’ll be at the range.
For the rest of you, or if mom isn’t looking over your shoulder, I have an interesting anecdote.
Last weekend, my neighbor across the street came a knocking to let me know that the neighborhood watch group would be meeting Saturday morning and that they’d like me to join in. This is the guy who, while the wife and I were at Firebase Blue for its pre-purchase home inspection, saw doing yard maintenance wearing a shirt that said “Shootin’ Deers and Drinkin’ Beers”.
At that time I figured I could get along with this guy, and yesterday proved I was right.
This “watch” meeting was more on the disaster preparedness side than the anti-crime side, but I did learn that our little neighborhood, with only two entrances, though no gates, and only about 25 homes, has a “Safety and Security” group assigned for during emergencies.
While there is no “Group Leader” assigned in the program they use, my neighbor across the street is on that group. I met two of the other three members yesterday’s with the fourth person a no-show at the meeting.
Hmm: Two entrances, Four people, 24 hours in a day.
Hey. That sounds like a short watch duty roster to me. Kewel! I want in!
At the end the group took a walk around the neighborhood and discussed who lives where, whos’ elderly, who has children that might need help if whatever happens happens while the parents were at work or what have you.
At the end of the day, I wandered back over across the street to the neighbors house to both thank him for the invite to the meeting and to let him know that I would be going to the rifle range today to meet a co-worker or two, and that if he’d like to come along that he was more than welcome. He scratched his chin and said, “You know, I do have to sight-in that 7mm I bought for my son.”
So, if his work doesn’t come-acallin’, he’ll be joining.
Kewel.
