Month: February 2007

Man, I forgot about McSweeneys

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush Wish to Return Their Television.

McSweeney’s is a frequently hysterical satire site that I never remember to look at because they don’t have a friggin’ RSS feed.  I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish – they don’t have ads that you’d miss out on if you looked at the RSS instead of the main site.  There is no reason I can imagine.  And yet still no RSS feed.  On the bright side, when I do remember, there’s usually a bunch of new stuff since the last time I was there.

Snow again

It’s so disappointing when you find out at 10pm that you somehow missed the announcement that it was going to snow, and didn’t notice the snow until there was almost an inch on the ground, but wake up the next morning to find that the streets are already clear.

So now you’re just stuck with the occasional icy spot, a few dumb drivers, and no excuse to stay home from work. I hear lots of people say, “Oh, it’s not the roads you have to worry about, it’s the other drivers.” I think that’s a pretty pathetic excuse. There are ALWAYS stupid drivers trying to kill you. One woman did it to me this morning. Somehow, her red light and my green turn arrow meant she could go right into the lane I was turning into.

I’m really looking forward to getting into the city, where people do the sensible thing when it snows and don’t drive for a week.

Not looking good for Whole Foods

According to the Columbia Heights News Forum, it’s not looking good for a new grocery store in the DC USA site. That’s too bad. I was pulling for Whole Foods. Certainly we can make do with the one on P Street. But I hear on the forum that the new Giant and the local grocers are having a hard time keeping up with demand, and I do love Whole Foods’ organic vegetables.

It looks like it’s 1.6 miles from our house to Whole Foods. That’s doable.

What is art, really?

Inhabitat » URBAN CURATORS PROJECT In Downtown Providence

Passing residents were pleasantly bewildered when they stumbled upon a series of gold-painted frames haphazardly taped to graffiti-covered walls and the crumbling exteriors of abandoned sites.

This is pretty cool.  Up in Providence, they just stuck frames on random spots of wall and whatnot.  For anyone who has ever wondered what makes something art, this seems to suggest it’s just the eye of the beholder.

I wish they used the closed captioning

As you may know, it’s really f’ing cold in the DC area.  NPR told me this morning that it was 9 degrees with a wind chill of -1.  That’s totally awesome.  Yesterday, I was at the gym, and while I was on the elliptical, I had my usual choice of ESPN, NBC4, and Fox News.  I generally watch ESPN, because NBC is usually showing Dr. Phil, and Fox News is just completely insane.  But during ESPN commercials, I looked over at what Neil Cavuto was talking about.  They didn’t have the closed captioning turned on, so I could just read his inflammatory headlines.  The one that made me laugh out loud was the suggestion that this cold spell disproves everything we’ve been hearing about global warming.  He then went on to talk to some PR guy from some big company, at which point the closed captioning came on, and the guy actually said that obviously global warming people will never change their opinions that it’s happening, and his reasoning for this was that they were crazy liberal Democrats.  Then he took a few uninspired shots at Al Gore, at which point I went back to ESPN heaping praise on undeserving Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning.

The logic here is absolutely incredible.  Al Gore made a movie blaming people for global warming.  Al Gore is a Democrat.  Therefore, global warming can not be happening, and is merely a political tool of the liberals against big business.  Amazing.  Paranoia, thy name is Fox News.

Twelve hour school days?

As Push for Longer Hours Forms, Intriguing Models Arise in D.C. via DCIst

Kids in school 12 hours a day? It seems to be working in some schools, but I’m not totally convinced. Of course, if I were totally convinced by a one page newspaper article, that’s probably not saying much.

Anyway, it seems that some schools have had a lot of success with extended days and shorter vacations. It makes sense that, without a long summer off, kids have less time to forget what they learned in previous years. And it makes sense that spending more hours in class will make you learn more than spending fewer hours in class. But I’m not sure there has been enough research into how much might be too much. After a certain point, the kids aren’t going to learn anything. They’re going to be bored and inattentive and start causing trouble. It’s not reasonable to expect them to be in school all the time.

One school that has been successful so far has 12 hour days, broken up into a more or less normal school day, then a break in the afternoon for a few hours, and then dinner, followed by two hours of study hall. Students get home late, but all their work is done for the day. As an aside, during my last two years of high school, I did most of my homework each day either in study hall, the library, or the cafeteria. By the time I got home, I was usually completely done with school until the next morning. It was fantastic – my grades were good because I wasn’t blowing off work, and I had plenty of time to enjoy being a kid.

I’d be curious to see what happens when a couple of regular public schools try this. It will take some time, as the teachers and the curriculum will have to adjust as well as the students.

I worry, though, that some kids are really going to suffer if they spend this much time in school. For example, for me, middle school (grades 6-8 if you don’t/didn’t have middle school in your area) was an almost entirely social learning experience. I certainly learned some school stuff, but the real bulk of what I learned was about dealing with other people. Up to then, I had been in private school. Sixth grade was really my first experience having classes with kids who weren’t upper-middle-class and white. I’ve long advocated sending thirteen-year-olds in groups to work on farms and things instead of trying to teach them how to pass high school entrance proficiency tests. Get a big diverse group of kids, have them spend six weeks getting up at 5AM, shoveling manure and plucking chickens. I know, it’s prohibitively expensive. Whatever.

It’s funny to finally be really thinking about schools and techniques for teaching kids in a much less abstract way than before. The wife’s not pregnant, and we’re not trying at the moment, but having children is finally something that will probably happen sooner rather than later. I think my perspective on schools will change a lot more once I get closer to having school-age children.

Look, I was right

First, I’ll gloat for a minute because I went 8-3 picking winners, and the Colts even covered like I said they would.  Rex Grossman played badly, but it was the Bears defense that really disappointed.  They gave up 190 yards on the ground to Rhodes and Addai.  You don’t win Super Bowls giving up that kind of yardage on the ground.

Then, I’ll complain that Peyton didn’t deserve the MVP.  True, no one had a really standout game, and typically when that happens they give the MVP to the quarterback of the winning team.  But I would say the Colts offensive line deserved it more than Peyton, and I would say that Addai, with 10 catches on top of 77 yards rushing, deserved it more than Peyton.  But I don’t expect the NFL to actually give the MVP to someone who deserved it.  Everyone was expecting all week that Peyton would get it, and they couldn’t go back on that.

I’ll also complain that the commercials were terrible.  CareerBuilder should go back to the monkeys instead of this Lost/Braveheart mistake they offered up yesterday.  I think Ford made a dumb move pushing their new Super Duty behemoth pickup just as GM is bringing hybrids to the market, although maybe they were just trying to fight off the challenge from Toyota and keep sales of the F-150 ahead of the Tundra, which is probably a losing battle at this point.

And I will finish by complimenting Prince on a nice performance.  I don’t know who the woman in white was, and she was weird, but she didn’t ruin it.  Covering the Foo Fighters was surprisingly cool, and I wish I could pull off the outfit Prince was wearing.

Super Bowl Sunday

Today is the big day. When people all over the country gather together in living rooms and sports bars (but not churches) to watch the best commercials advertisers have to offer, and maybe a football game.

If I were a betting man, and I’m not, except at the craps table, I would take the Colts to cover. The spread is 7 last I checked, and I think the Colts will win by that much. I’m 7-3 picking winners so far in the playoffs, which means maybe I should be betting on the games. But those picks have been ignoring the spread.

In any event, I’m hoping that Peyton finally wins a Super Bowl so we can stop talking about how he hasn’t won a Super Bowl. And I’m hoping the Bears get pounded, because I’ve been telling everyone all season that they aren’t very good, and they’re running out of time to prove me right. Yes, I realize they made the Super Bowl. But who did they beat? No one. The whole NFC sucks.

So, we’re going to a Super Bowl party at the home of frequent reader and commenter gayleforcewinds, who remains the only girl , along with her sister, are the only girls I know who don’t live with a guy, yet own a big-screen HDTV. We went to her party last year, too, and I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully it will be a good game, too.