The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

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  • Strip Polka — another silly Facebook meme

    OK, this is another silly Facebook object trouve meme. Let’s see how this turns out.

    INSTRUCTIONS::
    1. Put your iPod or other music player on shuffle.
    2. For each question, press the “next” button to get your answer.
    3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS! (or stupid)
    4. Tag friends who might enjoy doing this as well as the person you got this from

    My list is below the fold; my conclusions are given right here: This is dumb. Although it’s supposed to yield deep insights or at least some humor, it really just generates noise. There is a disturbing trend in today’s society tho believe in the innate wisdom of randomness, as if throwing a patische of things together somehow tells us something important. That can happen but it rarely does.

    More significantly, perhaps, the originator of this meme misunderstood iPods nearly as much as Apple does. I have 26 GB of songs. Most of them were on albums with other songs I like. Some were on albums I decided I didn’t like after hearing. Probably most have been listened to one or two times. Heck, some of them are just physics demonstrations. Picking songs at random from that collection is no more likely to reveal something interesting about me as, well, pulling Scrabble tiles from a bag is to reveal the Question to life, the universe, and everything.

    I can see two ways to improve this and give it a fighting chance of being interesting. First, the songs should be picked from a Party Shuffle of songs you actually, you know, listen to. Second, I think it would be better to pull maybe 20 songs into a playlist but then choose which song matched which question. Utter randomness is, by definition, without meaning. But allow me to mediate consciously, and I just might reveal something.
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  • A Picture Worth 800 Billion Dollars

    In case somehow you think all the talk of “an economy in free fall” is somehow just hyperbole:

    An economy in free fall: Weve already lost far more jobs than typical and the bottom is not in sight.
    An economy in free fall: We've already lost far more jobs than typical and the bottom is not in sight.

    This graphic, printed at Swampland, makes clear: We are already in deep trouble. The current stimulus bill is, in anything, too small. Under circumstances like these, rapid and massive spending by the government is the only thing that has ever been shown to have an ameliorative impact.

  • Burning Down the House

    Listening to the Republican leadership on how to fix the economy is like listening to the arsonist on how to put out the fire.

    Somehow the debate on the stimulus package has shifted to the Republicans and their criticisms.  Legitimate analyses are always welcome, of course, and when grown-ups want to help make a bill better, it’s a wonderful thing.  But we don’t have grown-ups running the Republican party any more.  These guys have had nearly fourteen years to try their one-size-fits-all “solution” — tax cuts and deregulation — and their experiment has landed us on the precipice of the worst economic situation since the Great Depression (and we’re not done yet).

    The economy is in free-fall and the President is trying to buy us a parachute, but these yahoos can only scream “If we just flap our arms harder, everything will be OK” while nitpicking the brand of rope the President chose for the shroud strands.  In some sense, you can see why:  For most of them, they have their own golden parachutes that will ensure that, when we hit rock bottom, they aren’t mangled like the rest of us.  And since their descent is safe, why help out anyone else?

    We are teeteering on the edge of a deflationary spiral, the single most destructive circumstance known to economics.  We’re already mired deep in a liquidity trap.  Our infrastructure is aging and inadequate, and our competitiors are breathing down our necks.

    The next time someone tells you that “government spending doesn’t create a single job or grow the economy”, ask them if they’ll email that you … over the Internet, funded and nurtured by the federal government long before anyone figured out how to make money off of it.  Ask them if they’ll ship it to you, via a truck running over the same Interstate that likely makes their comfy surburban lifestyle available.  Maybe they’ll type it up using the energy that comes from governmental hydro projects.

    Anyone spending money creates jobs.  Under many circumstances, the market is clearly superior.  Under some others, government is.  And under most, it’s still an open question.

    Could we please stop listening to the arsonists?

  • The (non) Importance of Caring

    A former student of mine at some point had a facebook status that read,

    Why should I study something I don’t care about?  Why should teachers teach something they don’t care about?

    Actually, to be 100% accurate, the student’s status said that this was in someone else‘s status.  But still…

    “Why should I study something I don’t care about?” is a question that sounds more reasonable than it actually is.  Where you are at 17 — or at 5, or at 38 — is not who you will be your whole life.  Sometimes, indeed often, you don’t have the experience or wisdom to know what’s important.  (This is a generic “you”, not a some-particular-student “you”.)  And sometimes, to get to the good stuff, there really is other stuff you have to go through or learn.  That’s a part of life.  I’d even argue it’s not a bad part of life.  Things you learn should be meaningful, and that meaning should be clear.  But you aren’t done, yet, and what you care about is simply not the whole total of what’s worth knowing or doing.  It isn’t for anybody.

    I guess fundamentally I disagree strongly with the proposition that “what I care about” is synonymous with “what is important”.  There’s an arrogance in that which is every bit as haughty and unjustified as the “We’re the teachers so we decide what is important” tack.  It’s so inward-focused it’s very nearly solispistic.

    To be fair, I am somewhat assigning motivations on the assumption that the point of asking “Why should I study something I don’t care about?” is to offer as an answer “You shouldn’t”.  If the question is a legitimate call for information, it’s perfectly valid.  Students should demand to know why they are studying what they are asked to study, how it moves them along toward their goals or what it achieves.  Teachers should continually ask (themselves and others) why they cover what they do.  So as long as the questioner is intellectually honest enough to be open to the possibility that there could be things worth studying even if the questioner doesn’t particularly care about them — as long as that’s true, it’s a good question.

  • Week 9 in the program

    The truly observant will notice that somehow I skipped from Week 7 to Week 9. I’m not a time traveler… I had miscounted earlier. *sigh*

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    318.8 | -6.6 | -49.6
    Blood Pressure | Systolic | Diastolic
    * | 120 | 70

    I fell just short of the magic number, 50 lbs total weight loss.  That would put me halfway to my first goal.  Oh, well, I’ll take a 6 lb/wk loss rate.  My blood pressure is now in the normal range and seems stable, which is nice.

    People at PWMC were nicely supportive.  I’m going to say something all other dieters are going to hate, but this actually hasn’t been too hard.  I think the HMR system is uniquely suited to my own quirks.  For example, I don’t missing cooking at all, and despite being a continual grazer, I don’t actually miss food all that much.  A lot of the weekly class revolves around strategies for variety, which leaves me cold.  I’m OK with eating the same 4 or 5 things day in and day out.  I like not having to work at it.

    That said, there are still challenges.  When I’m in school and on schedule, everything’s easy, but weekends and snow days still throw me for a loop.  I’m not sure how well I’ll handle my upcoming conference and trip to Chicago.  But most days, this is remarkably easy.  Still, a long long way to go remains, and then I face the challenge of maintenance.

    weight-2009_0203bp-2009_0203

  • 25 Things

    There is a viral meme going around Facebook about listing 25 random things about yourself. It’s not accurate, since people spend some time crafting the 25 things (so they’re not really random … it’s not like people write 500 things and do a Monte Carlo selection or anything). Anyone, I got tagged by Annie and gamely set out to make my list, which is reproduced below the fold.
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  • Somewhere Beyond the Bitter End

    This is another in my intermittent series of posting things I’d written long before, so that they’re out there on the Net. I wrote this one quite some time ago, back when I was in the Bard Writing Workshop that Hun runs. I wrote most of it after taking a quick walk on a brisk October day right before that day’s meeting of Bard — so yes, this is yet another of my last-minute desperate writings because I didn’t have anything. But it came out OK. I eventually submitted it to The Hun Review and it made it … in 2007, I think.

    The title comes from a Patty Griffin song.
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  • Week 7 on HMR

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    325.4 | -5.8 | -43.0
    Blood Pressure | Systolic | Diastolic
    * | 120 | 80

    I had a pretty good week, losing almost six pounds. It’s not quite a record but I’ll take it. 🙂 My blood pressure has clearly settled down to an equilibrium, as it is now bumping between 120/84 and 110/80 weekly. My doctor has decided I need only biweekly visits, and I’ll be having blood work done monthly rather than biweekly. All in all a very satisfying round of progress.
    weight-2009_0127
    bp-2009_0127

  • Week 6 on HMR

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    331.2 | -4.2 | -37.2
    Blood Pressure | Systolic | Diastolic
    * | 110 | 84

    It would seem I’ve hit my steady state in the program. Weight loss is bumping around 5 lbs weekly, which is more than satisfactory. My blood pressure also seems to have leveled off and found its equilibrium value. I’m still in for the long haul but it honestly hasn’t been so bad so far.
    weight-2009_01201
    bp-2009_0120

  • Health of the Republic: Reset to 50%

    It’s been a while since I’ve updated this ticker.  And it remains completely arbitrary, of course.  But with a new administration taking hold of the reins, it’s time for some (cautious) optimism about the restoration of the Republic.  I have genuine high hopes for Barack Obama and his people.  I think this is a smart, dedicated man who “gets” America — not the stupid rah-rah of the Bush years, but a deep and abiding commitment to the principles of this great nations — the principles that, in fact, make this nation great.

    On the other hand…  only 50%?  But yes, there are still the forces of malice and stupidity.  Over a quarter of the population somehow thinks the 43rd President did a good job.  Nearly 20% believe Saddam Hussein sent the 9/11 highjackers!  The Republicans are licking their wounds, but they’re not reforming.  We face a financial and economic criss of literally once-a-century severity, with a significantly weakened industrial and social base from which to launch a recovery.  We are still embroiled in two wars which appear intractable, and we still do have people out there hoping to cause us real harm.  And we’ve got all the long-lasting pernicious effects of the Bush administration — from torture to spying to “burrowing” — to overcome.

    So, here’s a glass lifted in celebration and anticipation of you, President Barack Hussein Obama.  Good luck and godspeed.

    Now, let’s get to work.