Whatever it was, tornado or microburst, it tore a path through the woods down the block. One of our neighbors had an oak fall on their house. Scary.
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Yep, I Think It Was a Twister
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Tree Down in the Neighborhood
This is a tree that fell just down the street from our house.
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Apparently Something Nasty Went Through Our Neighborhood
My wife just called me to tell me that something like a small tornado just went by our house. Tops of trees down the street have been twisted off, the siding of one of our neighbors' house has been torn off and a couple of trees are down in the street. Don't know if it was a tornado or a sever wind burst or what, but it did some damage. She's taking some pics and I'll post them later.
Related: Last Thursday we had 11 trees removed from the woods by our house. I'm thinking we were just in time.
President Obama Doesn’t Want Your Kids to Be Dumberer Than You
First he gave a speech indoctrinating America's students into his radical agenda of studying hard so they could, you know, get j-o-b-s some day and now he's going absolutely revolutionary on their young butts by proposing they spend more time in school. Good gracious, what's next, an expectation of literacy?
I predict a joining of forces of the following lobbyists in DC:
- Teachers
- Beach communities
- Amusement parks
- Baseball (major and minor leagues)
Here's an interesting nugget from the story:
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school.
Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
Based on the conversations I hear between what I'd consider very average American teenagers I'd say that students in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong probably also outscore American kids on English tests.
So how is it that our kids spend more time at school than their Asian counterparts, yet do not achieve the same level of proficiency? It would be easy to point the finger at the schools, teachers, curriculum, parents or the kids themselves, but the reality is it's probably a combination of factors. Some of it is crappy teaching, some of it is crappy parenting and Lord knows there are plenty of lame classes being offered.
My gut tells me that while President Obama's direction is positive, we'd probably be better served by looking at how the hours are spent before we look at adding more of them. There has to be a reason that our kids are being outperformed even though they're spending more time in school. We have to question everything: teachers, curriculum, class size, daily schedule and physical resources (books, lab equipment, etc.). Think about it logically: if we are doing something wrong and we add more time to do it without correcting our process then all we're going to accomplish is doing it wrong more often. How's that going to help?
links for 2009-09-28
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This is probably a good gift idea for my oldest son who's a pen afficianado. Pens that write anywhere, anyhow (upside down even) and are easily stowable.
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Creative idea to communicate a position on climate change: "To bring more attention to the climate change in the arctic regions and the melting ice, the German World Wide Fund for Nature placed 1,000 ice sculptures in the shape of sitting humans on the steps of the German capital at noon."
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"The Chapel Hill campus was hit with a 17 percent increase in financial aid applications this year, resulting in a 23 percent jump in the number of students who qualified for aid. By comparison, UNC saw an 8 percent increase in aid applications in the fall of 2008 and a 2 percent increase in those who qualify. The university provided $225 million in scholarships and student aid during the 2007-08 school year, the most recent year for which totals were immediately available.
'We've never seen this kind of increase,” said Shirley Ort, UNC’s associate provost and director of the Office for Scholarships and Student Aid. “In my lifetime, I've not seen this kind of economy either.'"
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This story about the House's proposed overhaul of the student financial aid system interests me for two reasons: first, I have kids just a couple of years away from going to college and second, because one of my summer internships in college (back in the 80s) was with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. I seem to remember that the student loan biz had issues back then too.
The Life Magazine Published the Week I Was Born
Here'sa link to the issue of the Life Magazine that was published the week I was born. Check out the cool products being advertised, like the "New Admiral 25" Rectangular Color TV in slim new cabinets" or the Fujica Single 8 the "only instant load movie camera that fits into your pocket." Groovy!
By the way, you can check out the entire Life magazine archive at GoogleBooks.
links for 2009-09-25
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"There’s still no substitute for the real thing but unless you have a full collection or a penchant for flea markets, at least you can flip through virtual editions of every Life magazine between 1936 and 1972—courtesy of an expanded partnership between Time Inc. and Google"
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Rex Hammock has a fascinating post about something I'll call an "insta-magazine" that was published in Australia: "So, to recap: The dust storm occurred on Wednesday. Photographers — professional and amateur — headed out into the storm and, with no organizing or pre-event planning, captured “a day in the life of a dust storm.” As people with digital tools in their hands are wont to do, photographers and observers began to upload what they were seeing and experiencing and capturing to the web. With the speed and finesse of someone who has an up-close-and-personal understanding of the “community” aspects of photo sharing (trust me on that one) and who helped to innovate much of the processes of web-based “social-media” collaborative magazine publishing, Derek put together a magazine — and has given us just one more glimpse into the potential of the magazine format."
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I like the idea that the folks at Clinton Global Initiative came up with as an alternative for conference bag swag.
Hitting a Little Close to Home
The Piedmont Triad folks who were arrested this summer and charged with planning terrorist attacks may have been targeting the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. Before we moved here to the Triad we lived about ten minutes away from Quantico, close enough that you could hear them training sometimes. (We learned pretty quickly how to tell the difference between artillery and thunder).
links for 2009-09-24
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"I believe that there are many problems in companies that look a lot like the problem Netflix faced — such as insurance underwriting, oil exploration, or evaluating an employee's probable success. As long as the problem has lots of structured data and clear outcome variables (and the company can successfully design a way to keep customer and proprietary data safe) it makes sense to design a competition that uses the market in ideas. Then you just have to decide how much it is worth to you to have a 10% advantage over the competition on a key issue."
Butt Duster
Another text from the oldest in reply to my text that was a reply to his first text about Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly being at West Forsyth today. I told him I thought Reilly was there to tape the “Homecoming” show for ESPN:
“yeah they came to school, and mr. riley told a story about a “butt duster” who saw all the models of sports illustrated swim suit edition naked. and the principles were so mad that he said it”
Anyone want to fill me in on what a “butt duster” is?
Also, I obviously need to explain the difference between “principles” and “principals” to my son.
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Befuddled 