Monthly Archives: August 2010

Pressman’s Hat

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This piece about newspaper pressmen during the glory days of the newspaper business includes an illustrated guide to making a pressman's hat.  Way cool.

I also like the quotes about newspapers:

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed." – E. Hubbard.

"I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust."- Charles Baudelaire.

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." - Thomas Jefferson.

It’s the Teachers Stupid

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According to a study by the L.A. Times and the Rand corporation, teacher effectiveness has a much greater impact on students' success than the school they attend. Here are two bullet points I found particularly interesting:

  • Highly effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year. There is a substantial gap at year's end between students whose teachers were in the top 10% in effectiveness and the bottom 10%. The fortunate students ranked 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math. 
  • Contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas. Rather, these teachers were scattered throughout the district. The quality of instruction typically varied far more within a school than between schools.

And I really found these two paragraphs interesting:

On visits to the classrooms of more than 50 elementary school teachers in Los Angeles, Times reporters found that the most effective instructors differed widely in style and personality. Perhaps not surprisingly, they shared a tendency to be strict, maintain high standards and encourage critical thinking.

But the surest sign of a teacher's effectiveness was the engagement of his or her students — something that often was obvious from the expressions on their faces.

Where Others Might See Art I See Nastiness

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The "Gum Wall" in Seattle has to be one of the grossest things I've heard of, on a par with haggis. From the website:

Located in Post Alley, under Park Place Market, the Gum Wall has its beginning in the early 1990s, when people, irritated that they had to wait in line to get tickets to the theater, stuck chewing gum on the wall. At first, they would use the gum to stick small coins to the wall, but in time, the tradition of the coins disappeared, and the gum remained.

Theater attendants scraped the Gum Wall twice, but gave up in 1999, when it became a certified tourist attractionof Seattle. Now it is filled with thousands of pieces of chewing gum, of any color imaginable. And, as the wall grows, the chewing gum art becomes more sophisticated. You’ll find names written with pieces of gum, and symbols like hearts or the peace sign.

This pic says it all.

Help Me Help the Hungry, or, About That Head Shaving Thing

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ShaveMyHead
 At the day job we're making a final push in our food drive.  We've collected food at apartment communities, we've hosted food collection drives at the Winston-Salem Dash and Greensboro Grasshoppers games and in general we've worked our rear ends off to raise food and cash for the hungry.  The drive ends August 24, and as some of you may remember I agreed a couple of months ago to shave my head if people would donate $1,000 for that purpose. Well we're still short (although my mother has made a valiant effort to see her oldest son's hair lopped off) so we've put together a little campaign to get us there.  If we make it I'll be getting my head shaved on the 24th at a little shindig we're hosting to recognize our largest food contributors.  Contributing is as easy as sending a text, so please take a moment to help feed the hungry.

And yes, our promotional concept was a total ripoff of the cute girl quitting via whiteboard hoax from earlier this week.

I Think I Know What to Get the Oldest for His Birthday

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Our oldest son has always been into fancy writing instruments.  Since my wife and I have had home-based offices his entire life he's always had access to a multitude of pens and pencils, and if my favorite pen ever went missing I had a pretty good idea where it ended up: his room.

That's why I think the following will be a pretty cool gift for his birthday (and it's a helluva lot cheaper than a car or name brand shirt):

Sharpie Liquid Pencil

For those of us who can happily spend hours browsing the aisles at Office Depot, this is big, big news.

"A game-changing liquid graphite that eliminates broken pencil leads forever."

• Writes as smooth as a pen

• Erases like a pencil

• Becomes permanent like a Sharpie marker after three days

Quality of Death Index

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After my post last week re. dying with dignity you might think I'm on a death kick here, but really it's just coincidence.  Just read this post at BookofJoe about an article in The Economist about an attempt to assess the dying process throughout the world:

Britain tops the table. For all the health-care system’s faults, British doctors tend to be honest about prognoses. The mortally ill get plentiful pain killers. A well-established hospice movement cares for people near death, although only 4% of deaths occur in them. For similar reasons, Australia and New Zealand rank highly too.

Some countries, such as Denmark and Finland, that normally score higher than Britain on human-development indices rank lower on the quality-of-death index. They concentrate more on preventing death (which they see as a medical failure) rather than on helping people die without suffering pain, discomfort and distress. America scores poorly because of the health insurers’ rule that they pay for palliative care only if a patient relinquishes curative treatments. 

Spencer Needs Help Getting His Face Out of the Mud on Farmville

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Bad: Your personal assistant quits.

Worse: She does so in a creative white board slide show emailed to about 20 of your co-workers.

Worser: She lets everyone know you called her a HPOA – hot piece of (use your imagination) – on the phone with someone.

Worst: She reveals how you spend time online, and the majority of that time is spent on…Farmville?! 

Spencer, Jenny's got your number.