Aw, I missed it

Yesterday was World Zombie Day. And I missed it. Further cementing its reputation as a nerd/geek town, though, Huntsville had a strong showing:

On Sunday, as sort of a preview to the inevitable zombie takeover of the world, more than 100 people dressed up as the undead and took to the streets of downtown Huntsville for the second annual Zombie Walk.

Yes, there are 100+ people in Huntsville who not only are willing to be seen lurching down a public street, dressed in tattered clothing and smeared with fake blood and related goop, but they actually took the time and made the effort to do so. I guess I view potential zombies as being less "on the ball." When the zombie takeover does happen, I guess Huntsville will not be a good place to be.

Me, I spent World Zombie Day checking out some sketches by this guy. Silly me.

Small world

Every once in a while I'm reminded up just how small the world can be. What brought about this epiphany? Essentially it was Facebook. Some of you who know me well may be very surprised to learn that I have a Facebook account. In my defense, I feel that I was led to Facebook under false pretenses. I was told that ALL the Caffeine cousins use Facebook to keep in touch. Since I didn't have an account, well I was just missing out on much good family fun. Hence, I gave in and created an account. It turns out, though, that for the most part it's one cousin who spends a lot of time on Facebook. Now I love Cousin Sandee dearly so I don't mind the fact that I now am better able to keep up with her, but the whole Facebook thing has been pretty useless as far as I'm concerned.

Then weird things started to happen. An old college pal did track me down via FB and I thought that was kind of cool. Last week, though, I got a real blast from the past when I got a friend request from a name that stirred vague high school memories. Sure enough it was an old teammate from my high schol "nerd bowl" days. I finally got around to agreeing to be his "friend" and then I almost immediately got a request from another old high school friend who also went to Ole Miss with me. It turns out she works at a really small college in Louisville where I happen to know someone on the business faculty. Finally I had a FB message this morning from a girl (er, woman I guess now) that I sort of knew in high school, but never was friends with. She'd seen my TV appearance from a few weeks ago and just wanted to say "hey." I feel like I've moved back to Lawrenceburg.

Anyway, that's about it for today. I've got a bunch of tests to prepare for next week, so I'd best get to it.

An education rant

I'm quite tired of endless debates about how to improve our schools. Some issues seem hard to resolve, while other solutions appear fairly obvious. I am pretty darned sure, though, that the Dallas (TX) Independent School District does NOT have the answer. The Dallas ISB is upset that so many freshman (as high as 20%) fail to advance to 10th grade. The solution? Come up with some new rules. The highlights:

•Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."

•Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.

•Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.

•Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."

•High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals. For middle school the rate is 15 percent; for elementary it's 10 percent.

Also note, this is on top of last year's innovation that no student can be assigned a "six-weeks grade" lower than a 50.

I don't know just how to express my dismay. I did, though, enjoy some of the rationalizations offered up by ISD big wheels. One said, "We want to make sure that students are mastering the content [of their classes] and not just failing busy work." Well that's a noble goal, but according to the new rules, only 40% of a student's grade is determined by test grades and at least 20% must be determined by "class work." "Class work" sounds a lot like the dreaded "busy work" to me

I find the whole thing depressing, but this is not really an unexpected outcome of the much ballyhooed goal of standardization that is sweeping the education industry these days. Think about it. When you standardize are you going to standardize "up" to a more difficult level that fewer students will master or "down" to give yourself improved, measurable outcomes? Looks like Dallas has decided.

Big Orange HA

In honor of The Vol Abroad, I give you a rather lame joke:

Have you heard President Bush is thinking of making Phil Fulmer (UT football coach, for the time being) the new director of FEMA?

No, why?

Because of how quickly he can evacuate over 100,000 people!

Yes, attendance is down at Vols games this year. Here's a story on the local business impact and here's one from the student perspective.

Football quote

Though I don't really pay attention to football until the World Series is over, I couldn't help but notice this quote from Vince Young in a story about how the media is making him out to be a bad guy. Says Vince:

"I'm a great guy, a great humble guy," Young told MSNBC.com. "I've done a whole lot in my career in just three years and for [the media] to do stuff like that to try to make me look bad for some reason -- I don't know why -- but they're just writing my legacy. (my emphasis)

I know extemporaneous speaking is tricky and quotes can be taken out of context, but ... Well I just don't know what to say.

I don't get this

For those of you who don't follow baseball (I have heard there are some), ... The New York Yankees did not make the playoffs this year -- ending a streak of 13 years in the post season. Needless to say, everyone figured the guillotine was being wheeled into place.

Now heads are starting to roll. Before we get into just what changes are being made, consider the situation. The Yankees are an old team, filled with expensive free agents whose best days are behind them. So where would you start if you wanted to rebuild your team to its accustomed level of excellence? Maybe try to acquire some good young prospects? Take steps to rebuild your own minor league system (they've been the absolute worst team in terms of minor league position players making it to the majors from 1997-2005)? No! If you are the Yankees, you'd start by firing the 3rd base coach? According to manager Joe Girardi:

"... Bobby is a good baseball man, but moving forward we realize changes are going to have to be made in various areas of the club."

So getting rid of the 3rd base coach and a special pitching instructor (whatever that is) is going to turn around the Yanks? If this is their view on necessary changes, I wouldn't be surprised if the Yanks are missing from next year's playoffs as well.

I hate to, but ...

I have to talk about the election today.

I'm really not excited by this election, perhaps because I'm not inspired by either of the two leading candidates (and the Libertarians let me down this time). I have not watched any of the debates and I've tried my best to tune out most of the election noise. I have looked at both candidates "plans" and I've decided which one I'd be less unhappy with. [Here's a hint -- the running mate selections really convinced me which candidate I plan to vote against!] So I've been blissfully ignoring the political chatter.

Then, though, I read this column by E.J. Dionne, Jr. in The Washington Post and I just have to comment. In case you don't want to read the whole thing, Dionne says that the McCain campaign may be (inadvertently?) paving the way for the reemergence of the far right as a political force -- "a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger."

False claims that Obama is Muslim, that he trained to overthrow the government and that he was educated in Wahhabi schools are a standard part of the political discussion. These fake stories come from voices on the ultra right that have dabbled in other forms of conspiracy, including classic anti-Semitism. McCain and his campaign do not pick up the most extreme charges. They just fan the flames by suggesting that voters don't really know who Obama is, hinting at a sinister back story without filling in the details. That is left to the voters' imaginations.

I don't doubt that there are some angry, scared, xenophobic racists who plan to vote for McCain because he is a white man with a familiar name. What I quibble with is Dionne's assumption that this is the power base of McCain's support (or even the Republican party). To me it's no different from the wackos who think Bush was behind the Sept. 11 bombings and who insisted on the legitimacy of the TX Air National Guard memo long after it was shown to be a fake. [I'm not claiming GWB did not shirk his duty; I'm just saying the smoking gun memo was a fake.] I know there are "far lefties" out there that would not vote for McCain for any reason. I don't extrapolate from that, though, to presume that all Obama supporters (or Democrats) are members of Moveon.org or similar groups, even though they may get a disproportionate amount of attention at times.

So two things puzzle me about Dionne's column. First, the fact that there are people who buy into the notion that Obama is a closet Muslim seeking to undermine the country does not, to me, indicate that this is a major political force. Even the often repeated claim that 20% of voters surveyed think he's a Muslim appears to be a little shaky. I looked at the Pew Center surveys and it seems to me that the 20% figure probably reflects the percentage that had HEARD Obama is Muslim. I'm in that 20% but I don't believe it, so I don't see how that's relevant to bias against Obama (though the percentage believing it does seem to be rising). True, the rumor wouldn't be out there if Obama were a white male with an "American" name, but I don't think the existence of the rumor implies that much about the political will of the nation. I know people who are voting against Obama primarily because of religion, but it is their own religious views (primarily about abortion) rather than a rumor about Obama, that seem to be motivating them.

Second, I'm not sure I like the implied smear against McCain. Even Dionne points out that McCain has, "begun to insist, against the sometimes loud protests from his crowds, that Barack Obama is, among things, a 'decent person'."

So decry the fact that there are people who think any black man with a foreign name must be the anti-Christ (another rumor), but I don't think that indicates a groundswell of political support for the position. Nor do I think it says a whole lot about John McCain.

Mixed feelings

Well the Nobel in economics has been announced and I'm sort of happy, a bit disappointed, but, cynically, not surprised. The Academy chose to honor Paul Krugman.

I have mixed feelings because I do think Krugman was on his way to some very important work in trade theory. I don't particularly agree with some of his conclusions regarding "managed trade," but I think his early work truly was in the Nobel neighborhood.

Then, however, Prof. Krugman became a celebrity columnist for the NY Times and he seemed to forget a lot of economics. There almost always was an economic theory to support his columnist claims, but he seemed only to seek out theories that supported a certain political party or, more often since 2000, he didn't care so much about supporting his favored party as doing everything possible to tear down the opposition. Now I'll be among the first to admit his favorite target needed some taking down, but I felt Krugman's approach was overly partisan -- for an economist.

See, that's where my mixed feelings come from. As an op-ed columnist, most of his stuff was well within the bounds of political discourse. As an economist, though, he knew he was not presenting a measured analysis of whatever the issue of the day was. The one that put the nail in his economist coffin for me was his series on poor employment numbers in 2004. I can't find a non-partisan link to the controversy right now, but there was pretty wide agreement that Krugman intentionally cherry-picked employment numbers (in a way he knew to be dishonest) to make Bush look bad. Worse than that, to me though, was when he used a highly misleading graph to "prove" the Council of Economic Advisors simply served as a lapdog to Bush. Here's a pretty good link to that one.

[Note that it's not just the righties who make this claim. In 2005 The Times' departing ombudsman chose to use his farewell column to hit Krugman: "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."]

He can be a partisan columnist if he wants, but he can't use that to advance his standing as an economist. Now the Nobel committee didn't cite his work as an op-ed columnist in awarding him the prize, but c'mon, does anyone believe he'd have won it otherwise? In my opinion, his major contributions to economics pretty much stopped after he became a regular Times' columnist.

Further, the committee chose to honor him as a solo winner. If the award really was for his work in trade (and related economic geography stuff), then there were several others equally as deserving. To me, it's the fact that he didn't share the award with anyone else that confirms the political nature of this award.

So, to sum up, I'm glad the Nobel focused on trade, but I'm disappointed that it chose to make such a blatantly (in my opinion) political statement with the award.

UPDATE: After reading some more economists' reactions to the prize, I may have to tone down my cynicism a little bit. Krugman's trade work really is garnering a lot of praise in the econ circles today, with many making it seem his prize was an eventual foregone conclusion. Of course there may also be a bit of "we don't want to criticize one of our own" in this thread. I still can't get past the feeling there was a pretty big dose of politics in his selection -- especially in the fact that the prize wasn't shared.

Cool story, but ...

also kind of sad.

Huntsville resident Douglas Prasher has led an interesting life. Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s he isolated the gene that allows the Aequoria Victoria jellyfish to emit its odd glow. Unfortunately his grant from the American Cancer Society ran out before he was able to develop its medical applications.

What's so interesting about that? Well for one, two guys that he later gave copies of the gene to were able to develop some applications and they just won a Nobel Prize. So what is old Doug doing now? It turns out he's driving the courtesy shuttle for a Huntsville Toyota dealership.

So is Doug bitter? Evidently not:

"I could have hung onto the gene," Prasher said during his lunch break Thursday. "But when you're in that environment and losing public funds, you've got an obligation to share. I gave it away, and they took it and ran with it."

Tough luck Dr. Prasher. Best of luck down the road.

UPDATE: Just found out the story also made NPR this morning. Maybe Prasher will be able to cash in a bit, or at least find a new job.

Quick note

I know I've been lax in my posting. Sorry, but I just can't seem to get back into the habit of writing something every day. In addition, things have been a little busy. What's been going on? Well ...

First, there's work. I swear I don't know where the hours of the day go. I do teach 5 classes per semester, but I don't have any new preps so I don't see why they eat up so much time. Yet they do.

Second, reading. I did another review for local paper, but they've now decided to go behind a "pay wall," so the best I can do is provide you a link to the book itself. As strange as it may seem, I actually had heard a lot about this book and I was eager to read it. In the end, though, I was let down. There was some good information in the book and it did make me think about traffic in new ways, but it seemed very repetitive. And there were pages and pages of those awful end notes. Here's a tip to non-fiction writers. If the info is important enough to go in your book, put it in the text. If the information itself is not vital, but it is helpful in explaining a vital concept, then put it in a footnote. It it's useless blather that simply repeats (or adds useless details to) information you've already stated, leave it out!

On a brighter reading note, I'm excited by this book by one of my favorite current authors. I enjoy his books because they're big, meaty romps that thoroughly cover whatever topic he features. They almost always involve an engaging tale AND they're so full of information that I feel as if I've taken an introductory college course in the topic by the time I finish the novel. This one, though, seems a bit different. It's an alternate universe/future world sort of book -- complete with an invented language and a hefty glossary (for all those invented concepts) at the back of the book. Plus, it's just shy of 900 pages (net of glossary and appendices). Needless to say, the first couple of hundred pages was pretty slow going. Now, though, I've become comfortable with most aspects of life on Arbe and things are moving more quickly. I suspect there is going to be a BIG MESSAGE at the end of the book, so I won't begrudge him for dropping the "college course novel" format just yet. I will be disappointed, though, if the book just fizzles to a disappointing end.

Oh, the baseball playoffs are in full swing (pun intended) -- well sort of. They build this crazy schedule, with an insane number of off days, and then, after being excited by close games in many of the 1st-round series, you have to wait through a delay until the scheduled start of the next round. I sort of understand why they schedule everything out rather than just starting the next round as soon as the previous one is finished, but I don't like it. On top of that, let me go back to those "off days" built into the post-season schedule. WHY? All season long baseball teams play 3 (or more) games at one location, then fly out and play in another city the next day. Why is it that once the playoffs arrive we (potentially) have to wait through 2 games in city A, a day off, 2 games in city B, a day off, 1 more game back in city A? It irks me.

I'm sure there are many other things that have been eating up my time, but those are the ones I can think of right now. Plus, I have to go to a meeting, so I don't have time to ramble on about anything else. Oh, I did want to drop a plug for the Meriwether Lewis Arts & Crafts fair this weekend. Cousin Becca (of 2B Pottery, website in development) is going to be there and I may be assisting her on Saturday. If you're in the area, stop by and check it out. Though biased, I think her stuff is nice -- and very competitively priced.

Peace out.