Winter in Pennsylvania

January blossoms

Why Schools Don't Work Anymore

The media never tell you why American schools don't perform. They complain about lack of funding, low expectations, poverty, discrimination, lack of parental involvement, teachers's unions, lack of minority role models. But they never do tell you about the low quality of students. The media acts like all students will perform the same if only  they had the same opportunities. But as any parent knows, all children perform differently. They have different abilities. And today's students have lower abilities than public school students did in the past.

Ken Burns Has Race On The Brain

I just watched a video on Vimeo featuring Ken Burns supposedly talking about the concept of story in documentaries but actually talking about race. This guy has one and only concern--and it's always the same one--race. Now, if he wants to devote his life to this issue that is certainly his right. But he shouldn't pretend to be giving us an insight on story technique when what he's really shoving at us is  another thinly veiled lecture on the eternal monstrous racism of whites.

There is actually one thing I do like about Ken Burns films. He does do great camera work.

Zimmerman Apologetics

I'm trying to think of all the mistakes the media (repeatedly) made in the Trayvon Martin shooting. The list so far:

1. Zimmerman was white (actually he was a mestizo--half white, half Hispanic)

2. Zimmerman weighed 220 pounds (he actually weighs 170)

3. He was bigger much bigger than Martin (Martin actually was bigger than him)

4. He called Martin a "fucking coon." Additional audio analysis showed that he actually said was it's "fucking cold."

5. He ignored an order from the dispatcher not to follow Martin. The dispatcher didn't even make a suggestion to him. It was merely an observation. It certainly never rose to the level of an order. And even if the dispatcher did give him an order, so what? Since when are we obligated to follow the orders of police dispatchers?

6. He didn't have any injuries (actually he had cuts to the back of his head and a broken nose)

7. It was Martin screaming for his life on the tape (it now appears it may have been Zimmerman).
8. Zimmerman was a racist (actually a year previously Zimmerman walked the neighborhood distributing fliers calling for justice for a homeless black man whom, he felt, had been unfairly pummeled by the police)

9. Zimmerman was a self-appointed vigilante. Vigilante means someone who takes the law into his own hands. Zimmerman appears to be a public-spirited volunteer who went out of his way to turn his concerns over the cops.

10. He was a fanatic who called the 911 emergency number 49 times in one month. (Actually it was 49 times in seven years, about once every two months).

11. He was a police wannabe. Is that, I wonder, anything like wanting to be a social worker wannabe, a nurse wannabe, a pastor wannabe, a politician wannabe, a community organizer wannabe? In short is it bad to want to have a career in public service?

Debating Poetry While Drifting In The Atmosphere

I once read a science fiction story about a planet where all the creatures had involved to such an elevated ethereal state that they floated around in the atmosphere like kites and how did they spend their time? They debated poetry.

Well I thought about that at the time and it seemed pretty unlikely but I had never heard of Internet either in those days. Just the other day I was reading about a site Tumblr which is supposed to be fantastically successful with millions or billions or trillions of users who dutifully post their messages, stories, art work, poetry, photographs, and videos. The site has become so popular apparently that now there is even a newspaper that covers what people post on the site.

Then just the other day I saw an article online about the newspaper that covers of the posts of a artwork. I'm thinking my this process is really getting about two or 3 degrees from any connection to the real world, whereupon that science fiction story I'd read all these many years ago came popping into my mind.

What we got here is people posting stuff in the ether and then other people writing about it in a paper dedicated to the site and then still other people writing about what people wrote about the blog site in the first place. I mean this is really getting carried to a ridiculous level of abstraction.