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September 30, 2004 /

Kentucky is entering about Year 18 of an ever-cascading educational disaster. The current horrible mistake is the proposed health plan for teachers, which (under a typical family plan) would have employees pay the highest state-insurance premium in the country, with the state making the next-to-lowest contribution. The idea was that a 3% raise would help cover the cost, but that means $1050 before taxes for the average teacher. The premiums alone for that family health plan would exhaust that in two months.

I’ve been half-following the story as it develops, because I went to a Kentucky public high school and I’m interested by the state’s boundless inventiveness as it races to achieve the worst school quality in the country (right behind you, Alabama!). There will very likely be a statewide (and illegal) educator strike on October 27th. Tonight I saw some TV news coverage of a teachers’ union protest at Waterfront Park; after a couple of crowd shots, they pulled in close on one woman, who held a posterboard sign stating that

KENTUCKY IS
BECOMING
EMBARRASING!

Some truths are self-evident.

September 29, 2004 /

I’ve been listening to my Frou Frou CD a lot. So much, in fact, that if it were a record the needle would probably have damaged it badly by now. The lows would be warmer, but the quality of sound would be degrading, and little peels of vinyl would be poking up like splinters on a fuzz stick, the worst method ever invented to start a fire.

blah blah Brendan’s pet issues

September 29, 2004 /

I shouldn’t do things like reading this list of banned books, because it just makes me hate everything and accomplishes nothing. But still. My favorites are the parents who challenged the curriculum inclusion of books by Madeleine L’Engle and C. S. Lewis for promoting “witchcraft and demons” and “mysticism,” respectively. I don’t need to tell you how thoroughly Christian their books are, because you already know. See? Accomplishing nothing!

In other nonaccomplishment news, I’m going to wait and see about IPac. On the one hand, their statement of principles aligns with a lot of what’s important to me, politically. On the other hand, this is also true of the ACLU, and there are reasons I don’t belong to the ACLU. I know it’s only a word, but I just don’t like the designation of “political action committee.” For some reason I’m comfortable supporting the EFF and Downhill Battle in a way that I don’t associate with any PAC.

Okay, there is one thing I’ve been meaning to write about. The place where the EFF and Downhill Battle intersect is Save Betamax, a combined effort to stop S. 2560 (which used to be called the INDUCE Act) from taking away your iPod, TiVo, CD burner, Kazaa, VCR, scanner, tape deck or whatever else the RIAA and MPAA decide is “inducing” people to violate their own definition of copyright. I don’t much like political blogging, but 2560 is bad. I’m unfortunately writing too late to tell you to sign up for the call-in days (as I did), but I’m sure there will be more opportunities to help stop the bill from becoming law. There’s an enormous effort by a huge coalition of companies, groups and individual humans to keep veto power over media innovation out of Hollywood’s hands. I hope you’ll join it, and I hope it works.

That accursed picture

September 27, 2004 /

First Leonard called me out on it, then Maria called me out on it, then Leonard sent me a text-only debunking, then tonight Jon of all people sent me the definitive Snopes proof. Yes, I would have noticed the weird TV shadow and the odd intersection of the panel and the teletype if I’d been looking for it, but I wasn’t, OKAY? OKAY! I TAKE IT BACK! I’M SORRY! I QUIT!

I don’t actually quit.

September 27, 2004 /

“BIKE HELMETS ARE GOOD. I am now going to wear a bike helmet at all times, even in the shower and when sleeping.”

Matt from Man-Man discovers the joy of bike riding on Quebecois backcountry roads. This is why we should bomb Canada.

If you monitor human-human interaction, you do it on your own time, understand?

September 24, 2004 /

I’ve been thinking about my performance evaluations class (which I’m failing, but still find interesting, except for the math), Leonard’s comment on bad metrics and the concept of keystroke counters and loggers (thanks to spam). There’s a quote in the textbook for the aforementioned class, “that which is monitored improves,” attributed to “Source Unknown.” So I can’t call out the person who said it for being wrong, which it is.

Here’s a handy set of heuristics for deciding when to monitor. For you! It would be better drawn as a flowchart or tree, but I’m lazy.

Good Things To Monitor

  • Efficiency of system-system interaction, based on system output

  • Quality of human-system interaction, with the goal of improving the system, based on user-satisfaction output

Bad Things To Monitor

  • Quality of human-system interaction, with the goal of improving the human
  • Quality of human-system interaction, based on system output

Incidentally, this also covers the basis of the problem I have with standardized testing. Or the lecture-test educational system as a whole, in fact.

Update 09.25.2004 1054 hrs: Leonard has pointed out to me that I somehow copied the wrong Crummy hyperlink. It’s fixed.

September 23, 2004 /

They replaced a bunch of parking meters on and near my street today, which means I just have to go out with a shovel and whang them all sideways again.

Unrelatedly, I was getting on the bus this morning when I saw a few shiny white cars all together, emblazoned with the following decals:

Louisville METRO PARKING ENFORCEMENT

and, slightly smaller,

EMERGENCY 911

I am still trying to envision a scenario to justify their coexistence.

Jasper takes off his hat to scratch his head. “See, it’s parked just… right up on the curb, there. A red curb. I don’t know, Waylon, what should we do?”

“Do?” snaps Waylon. He jerks the cell phone out of Jasper’s kangaroo pocket and thumbs three buttons. “I need the Louisville Metro Parking Enforcement Squa–“

Before he can finish the word, a driverless Corolla squeals up the street and whips around, braking hard. A man and a woman in suits and sunglasses parachute into the seats.

“Agents Long and Dervish,” says the woman coolly. “You called?”

Then, some buildings explode.

September 23, 2004 /

Oddly, today is the third anniversary of NFD. I still like this thing, although its relevance to my life is decreasing; Anacrusis is a better place to go if you’re interested in the text I output.

Really should update the IdiotCam, though.