Okay, this drives me nuts.
I read this:
Teacher beheaded by militants
SUSPECTED Islamic militants have beheaded a teacher in a lawless Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said today.
Said Badshah, 35, who ran a private school, failed to return home yesterday in Barwan village, near Wana, the main town in restive South Waziristan tribal agency, a local administration official said.
His headless body was found in a remote area this evening, the official said on condition of anonymity.
on the same day I read this:
Teens with disabilities enjoy last-ditch reprieve
"We're pushing for them to pass because it will make them feel better about themselves," said Vice Principal Cyndi Swindle, who oversees special education.
I'm not death on self-esteem like a lot of people are, but I still think this statement is pretty silly. But this is the part that irks me:
About a week after learning in January that he had again failed the math part of the exit exam, Juan Calderon did something he probably should have done months before. At the urging of his counselor, the 18-year-old signed up for a math class.
...
While some students with disabilities are still trying to pass the exit exam, others appear to have given up. Now that they know they don't have to pass the test to graduate, some seniors are making a habit of skipping class, said Schlim, the special ed teacher. She identified Kevin Muhammad as one of those students.
"It's a mixture of senior-itis and 'I don't need (to pass) this to graduate so I don't need to be here to learn this,' " she said. "Disappointing, but true."
Attendance records show Kevin was absent for six days, from the day Schwarzenegger signed off on the exemption until he had to take the test again. Schlim considers that no coincidence.
...
Larissa was glad to learn she can use a calculator on the exam this time, yet complained she didn't know how it would help her with fractions, word problems or algebra.
"It won't," Carter said. "If you don't know which buttons to push, it won't help."
Then he handed Larissa a calculator and chastised her for her last-minute approach to studying: "Why are you here at 4:15 the day before the test asking me how to use a calculator?"
So education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where a teacher in a girl's school was recently beheaded, is so precious that teachers risk their lives to offer it. And it's regarded so lightly by the kids in this story, and I suppose their parents, that the teachers beg and cajole and just can't get them to take it seriously. I can't box up educational opportunities that go to waste here in the U.S. and ship them off to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but when I read stories like these I sure wish I could.
I wonder sometimes what the goal of our public education system ought to be. The big picture is that every child should be educated to the limit of his or her ability and ambition. If we really did that, what would it look like? Would the kids in this story be cut loose at age 14 or so, more or less literate and able to add 2+3, to get jobs and make their way as best they can? Maybe two or three years of pushing brooms would motivate them to try to go back to school and take it more seriously. Or maybe they really can make it without more schooling - they must be able to, because they're mostly marking time until they can leave school as it is.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Received my own PE today. I haven't discussed it with my boss but it's very nice. I told her so and she was surprised because she thought there might be too many negative statements. Well, there are some, but they're fairly accurate. I get flustered when I'm trying to multitask and my priorities get changed. I need to work on getting paperwork done in a timely fashion. Overall it is very positive. She notes that I am "aggressive" in improving efficiency in my department using new technology as it becomes available, and that's true, and it's the thing I hoped she would mention.
There's a thing that happened with another boss at another company about 15 years ago.
My job at that company was to analyze environmental samples (soil and water) for pesticides by GC/ECD. Another chemist analyzed environmental samples for semivolatiles by GC/MS, which is more complex and sophisticated. (And nothing like what one might see on CSI.) His instrument went kablooey, and while it was being repaired the boss elected to lease an instrument from a different manufacturer, one that had different mass spec technology and whose software was still in beta-test stage. And he asked me to oversee this other chemist (who was older and much better paid than I) in his task of getting his work caught up on this thing, because he was the most scattered and unfocused person you can imagine when faced with a bunch of work. So I did. He and I worked 11- or 12-hour days, 6 days a week, for about a month, and got his stuff caught up. Actually, frequently I was working while he napped, but whatever. F was only a toddler then, and she acted out a bit because she wasn't seeing enough of her mommy. I felt very bad about that. But we got it done and got back to a regular schedule.
A couple of months later, F got sick. She had pneumonia, and I stayed at home with her for one week. When I got back, my boss told me that I didn't have a week's worth of vacation, having only been there a year and having taken a day here and there, and that I would have to make up my time. What about all that time I spent running an analysis that wasn't even my analysis? That didn't count, because it was before. This had to be after. Maybe I could come in and work with the midnight-shift techs on their extraction techniques or something. Well, I did that already as needed, it was part of my job. But no one kept track of my time, because I was exempt. It seemed to me that when the company needed me, the clock never ticked, but when I needed something, suddenly that clock started ticking away.
I went home that afternoon and I was so angry that I walked past my husband and daughter, straight upstairs, and lay facedown on the bed. I was like that cartoon of the angriest dog in the world. I couldn't even think, I was so mad. Finally I did start thinking, and I thought that I needed to find some way of dealing with the situation that wouldn't make me feel like I was being exploited. I needed to satisfy my boss that my time was made up, but it needed to benefit me, career-wise. Otherwise I would be so angry and resentful that it would make me sick. Working with the midnight-shift techs wouldn't do that because it was already my job. I thought, lying facedown there on the bed, about trying to work with the engineers, or the finance people, but I couldn't think of a way to initiate that.
Finally I thought about our lab manager, Dr. Marks. He didn't actually manage very much; he was kind of a chemist emeritus. He did a lot of special projects for the parent company. I knew he was in the midst of one project that wasn't going very well. Lying on the bed facedown, I thought about that project. Dr. Marks was trying to analyze benzyl chloride for benzene contamination. The problem he was having was due to the fact that benzyl chloride is very corrosive, so that he couldn't analyze it by purge-and-trap like one normally would. It ate the sparge needle. He was trying to analyze it using neat injections on GC/FID and not having much luck. I wondered if Dr. Marks had thought about codistillation, and lying facedown on the bed, I reviewed how that would work and thought about whether we had the glassware. I thought we did.
I got up off the bed and went downstairs. My husband eyed me cautiously because he knew something was wrong. He was appropriately indignant when I told him what my boss had said, but I was OK by then because I had a plan.
So the next morning after I found the glassware and looked up some boiling points I went into Dr. Marks' office and asked him how his project was going. He happily told me that he was having a lot of problems getting it to work. I asked him if he'd thought of trying codistillation. He was intrigued, so I told him how I thought it would work. Benzene boils below the boiling point of water, and benzyl chloride boils above the boiling point of water. So you would put some water in a boiling flask and a measured amount of benzyl chloride, and a measured amount (10 mL) of some solvent that boils above the boiling point of benzene but below that of water. Ideally this would be a solvent that doesn't respond well on FID, like a chlorinated solvent. You heat the this mixture until it starts to boil. The condenser directs the condensate into a graduated tube with a stopcock at the bottom. As the temperature in the boiling flask rises, the benzene evaporates first, and then the solvent, and then the water. The vapor goes into the condenser and condenses, and the solvent washes the benzene into the collection tube. When you've collected the whole 10 mL of solvent and a few drops of water for good measure, you drain the condensate. The benzyl chloride should all stay behind in the boiling flask. The condensate, which consists of the solvent you picked out with whatever benzene was in the sample dissolved in it, is what you analyze by GC/FID. I ended up telling him that my boss wanted me to make up my time that I was out with F, that he wanted me to work with the midnight crew, but I would rather work with him. Dr. Marks was cool with that. When the boss got there I was still so irritated that I could barely look at him. I told him I was going to work with Dr. Marks. In a friendly way, he asked me to sit down and tell him about it. He thought it sounded fine and just asked me to keep up with my hours.
Dr. Marks had about 30 samples of benzyl chloride, stored in a hood because the stuff actually ate the phenolic caps off the bottles. It was pretty nasty but I set my apparatus up next to the hood at the end of the day and went to work. And my method worked like a dream. I ran some reagent blanks and spikes, and some benzyl chloride replicates and spikes, and got perfect recoveries and great reproducibility. Once I had validated my method, I ran all the samples. I tabulated my data and put my name on it, which a former boss had told me one should always do, and organized all my stuff, gave it to Dr. Marks, and put the glassware away. And then my boss told me that I didn't have to turn in my hours, that I had been keeping track of. Nobody cared about that. He certainly didn't. Then what was that all about?
I thought all of that was over, but a few weeks later my boss called me into his office. It seemed that the corporate people had some kind of crisis, they were in a big hurry for some analytical work, and they needed Dr. Marks to do it right away. My boss told him that Dr. Marks was out, sick. Then have Laura do it, they said. My boss was fairly startled because I was actually the newest chemist and there were people with lots more seniority than me. But Dr. Marks had credited me when he used my data to report to them about the benzyl chloride. "You did yourself a favor when you worked with him on that benzyl chloride project," he said. Fortunately, what they wanted was very easy to do. They wanted Dr. Marks to repeat my work when he got back, and he told me that he got the very same results.
So when Dr. Marks retired, and subsequently my boss left the company, I was promoted to supervisor in the department. And I got to do lots of fun and interesting projects over the years. I'd still be happily working for that company except that after we remediated all of their hazardous waste sites, and with the worldwide downturn in the chemical industry in the 1990's they weren't making money, they had to cut the lab loose.
But that's my story about how I was the angriest dog in the world about a situation that I thought was very unfair and not nice at all, and it became a positive thing for me.
There's a thing that happened with another boss at another company about 15 years ago.
My job at that company was to analyze environmental samples (soil and water) for pesticides by GC/ECD. Another chemist analyzed environmental samples for semivolatiles by GC/MS, which is more complex and sophisticated. (And nothing like what one might see on CSI.) His instrument went kablooey, and while it was being repaired the boss elected to lease an instrument from a different manufacturer, one that had different mass spec technology and whose software was still in beta-test stage. And he asked me to oversee this other chemist (who was older and much better paid than I) in his task of getting his work caught up on this thing, because he was the most scattered and unfocused person you can imagine when faced with a bunch of work. So I did. He and I worked 11- or 12-hour days, 6 days a week, for about a month, and got his stuff caught up. Actually, frequently I was working while he napped, but whatever. F was only a toddler then, and she acted out a bit because she wasn't seeing enough of her mommy. I felt very bad about that. But we got it done and got back to a regular schedule.
A couple of months later, F got sick. She had pneumonia, and I stayed at home with her for one week. When I got back, my boss told me that I didn't have a week's worth of vacation, having only been there a year and having taken a day here and there, and that I would have to make up my time. What about all that time I spent running an analysis that wasn't even my analysis? That didn't count, because it was before. This had to be after. Maybe I could come in and work with the midnight-shift techs on their extraction techniques or something. Well, I did that already as needed, it was part of my job. But no one kept track of my time, because I was exempt. It seemed to me that when the company needed me, the clock never ticked, but when I needed something, suddenly that clock started ticking away.
I went home that afternoon and I was so angry that I walked past my husband and daughter, straight upstairs, and lay facedown on the bed. I was like that cartoon of the angriest dog in the world. I couldn't even think, I was so mad. Finally I did start thinking, and I thought that I needed to find some way of dealing with the situation that wouldn't make me feel like I was being exploited. I needed to satisfy my boss that my time was made up, but it needed to benefit me, career-wise. Otherwise I would be so angry and resentful that it would make me sick. Working with the midnight-shift techs wouldn't do that because it was already my job. I thought, lying facedown there on the bed, about trying to work with the engineers, or the finance people, but I couldn't think of a way to initiate that.
Finally I thought about our lab manager, Dr. Marks. He didn't actually manage very much; he was kind of a chemist emeritus. He did a lot of special projects for the parent company. I knew he was in the midst of one project that wasn't going very well. Lying on the bed facedown, I thought about that project. Dr. Marks was trying to analyze benzyl chloride for benzene contamination. The problem he was having was due to the fact that benzyl chloride is very corrosive, so that he couldn't analyze it by purge-and-trap like one normally would. It ate the sparge needle. He was trying to analyze it using neat injections on GC/FID and not having much luck. I wondered if Dr. Marks had thought about codistillation, and lying facedown on the bed, I reviewed how that would work and thought about whether we had the glassware. I thought we did.
I got up off the bed and went downstairs. My husband eyed me cautiously because he knew something was wrong. He was appropriately indignant when I told him what my boss had said, but I was OK by then because I had a plan.
So the next morning after I found the glassware and looked up some boiling points I went into Dr. Marks' office and asked him how his project was going. He happily told me that he was having a lot of problems getting it to work. I asked him if he'd thought of trying codistillation. He was intrigued, so I told him how I thought it would work. Benzene boils below the boiling point of water, and benzyl chloride boils above the boiling point of water. So you would put some water in a boiling flask and a measured amount of benzyl chloride, and a measured amount (10 mL) of some solvent that boils above the boiling point of benzene but below that of water. Ideally this would be a solvent that doesn't respond well on FID, like a chlorinated solvent. You heat the this mixture until it starts to boil. The condenser directs the condensate into a graduated tube with a stopcock at the bottom. As the temperature in the boiling flask rises, the benzene evaporates first, and then the solvent, and then the water. The vapor goes into the condenser and condenses, and the solvent washes the benzene into the collection tube. When you've collected the whole 10 mL of solvent and a few drops of water for good measure, you drain the condensate. The benzyl chloride should all stay behind in the boiling flask. The condensate, which consists of the solvent you picked out with whatever benzene was in the sample dissolved in it, is what you analyze by GC/FID. I ended up telling him that my boss wanted me to make up my time that I was out with F, that he wanted me to work with the midnight crew, but I would rather work with him. Dr. Marks was cool with that. When the boss got there I was still so irritated that I could barely look at him. I told him I was going to work with Dr. Marks. In a friendly way, he asked me to sit down and tell him about it. He thought it sounded fine and just asked me to keep up with my hours.
Dr. Marks had about 30 samples of benzyl chloride, stored in a hood because the stuff actually ate the phenolic caps off the bottles. It was pretty nasty but I set my apparatus up next to the hood at the end of the day and went to work. And my method worked like a dream. I ran some reagent blanks and spikes, and some benzyl chloride replicates and spikes, and got perfect recoveries and great reproducibility. Once I had validated my method, I ran all the samples. I tabulated my data and put my name on it, which a former boss had told me one should always do, and organized all my stuff, gave it to Dr. Marks, and put the glassware away. And then my boss told me that I didn't have to turn in my hours, that I had been keeping track of. Nobody cared about that. He certainly didn't. Then what was that all about?
I thought all of that was over, but a few weeks later my boss called me into his office. It seemed that the corporate people had some kind of crisis, they were in a big hurry for some analytical work, and they needed Dr. Marks to do it right away. My boss told him that Dr. Marks was out, sick. Then have Laura do it, they said. My boss was fairly startled because I was actually the newest chemist and there were people with lots more seniority than me. But Dr. Marks had credited me when he used my data to report to them about the benzyl chloride. "You did yourself a favor when you worked with him on that benzyl chloride project," he said. Fortunately, what they wanted was very easy to do. They wanted Dr. Marks to repeat my work when he got back, and he told me that he got the very same results.
So when Dr. Marks retired, and subsequently my boss left the company, I was promoted to supervisor in the department. And I got to do lots of fun and interesting projects over the years. I'd still be happily working for that company except that after we remediated all of their hazardous waste sites, and with the worldwide downturn in the chemical industry in the 1990's they weren't making money, they had to cut the lab loose.
But that's my story about how I was the angriest dog in the world about a situation that I thought was very unfair and not nice at all, and it became a positive thing for me.
Monday, February 27, 2006
I need to go to bed, but before I do I have one more thing to say. This is kind of in reference to a conversation I'm having elsewhere.
A few years ago a white couple were driving in a pickup truck somewhere in rural Tennessee. A car with some black folks came up behind. The pickup driver reached his arm around to the Confederate flag he had on the back of his truck and kind of waggled it at them. They pulled up alongside the truck and shot and killed him.
Really.
When they were caught, they and his wife told the same story and they were charged and convicted of murder.
I asked my husband if it's possible to say that those black guys were unregenerate murderers and at the same time say that the white guy was a ridiculous a-hole. He assures me that it is.
A few years ago a white couple were driving in a pickup truck somewhere in rural Tennessee. A car with some black folks came up behind. The pickup driver reached his arm around to the Confederate flag he had on the back of his truck and kind of waggled it at them. They pulled up alongside the truck and shot and killed him.
Really.
When they were caught, they and his wife told the same story and they were charged and convicted of murder.
I asked my husband if it's possible to say that those black guys were unregenerate murderers and at the same time say that the white guy was a ridiculous a-hole. He assures me that it is.
This is a sad story about George Michael. And he looks like heck in that picture.
The report of finding him slumped over in his car reminds me of a funny/scary thing that happened in my neighborhood one day. I came home from my deaconly duties early one Sunday morning and passed a car parked on the side of the road. The woman behind the wheel had her head propped on her arm, against the driver's side window. Something about that looked funny to me. When R and I went back to actually go to church that morning, I wanted to drive that way again and see if she was still there. She was. I pulled over in front of her and told R that I'd seen her earlier and I was worried that she was dead or something. He nicely went back to her car - I watched him through the rearview mirror - and started pecking on the glass. I could see him saying "Ma'am? Ma'am?" At first she didn't move and I thought she really was dead but suddenly her arm dropped and I saw her head turn to look at R. They talked for a moment and then he came back to the car and told me that she was OK, she'd just been sleeping. But the funny thing was that as he walked away from her car, a firetruck pulled up behind her and paramedics got out and approached her car. Apparently somebody else had seen her and been alarmed too, and they went on and called 911. How mortifying for her. At least R woke her up so maybe she had her wits about her when she talked to the paramedics. I guess she'll find somewhere else to take her naps, ha ha.
The report of finding him slumped over in his car reminds me of a funny/scary thing that happened in my neighborhood one day. I came home from my deaconly duties early one Sunday morning and passed a car parked on the side of the road. The woman behind the wheel had her head propped on her arm, against the driver's side window. Something about that looked funny to me. When R and I went back to actually go to church that morning, I wanted to drive that way again and see if she was still there. She was. I pulled over in front of her and told R that I'd seen her earlier and I was worried that she was dead or something. He nicely went back to her car - I watched him through the rearview mirror - and started pecking on the glass. I could see him saying "Ma'am? Ma'am?" At first she didn't move and I thought she really was dead but suddenly her arm dropped and I saw her head turn to look at R. They talked for a moment and then he came back to the car and told me that she was OK, she'd just been sleeping. But the funny thing was that as he walked away from her car, a firetruck pulled up behind her and paramedics got out and approached her car. Apparently somebody else had seen her and been alarmed too, and they went on and called 911. How mortifying for her. At least R woke her up so maybe she had her wits about her when she talked to the paramedics. I guess she'll find somewhere else to take her naps, ha ha.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
R and I attended another American Chemical Society meeting and talk tonight. This talk was about polymers made from lignin which is extracted from wood pulp. Our speaker said that this is very green, because wood is renewable, and that it will reduce our dependency on petrochemicals. However, he talked a lot about styrene. During the Q&A I asked if their styrene was derived from petroleum or if they were recycling it. He said that they are using petrochemically-derived styrene but that you can produce acetylene (C2H2) from lignin and make other chemicals; specifically, you can hit it with benzene and make styrene. Hello, benzene is a petrochemical too. I suppose the other chemicals he was talking about - little bitty hydrocarbons like methane and propene and so forth - could be produced in fermentation vats, but I'm not seeing benzene being produced that way.
Oh well. It was an interesting talk. He showed us a diagram of an extrusion device consisting of a screw being turned by some sort of motor. The stuff being extruded is introduced between the threads at the motor end of the screw and is forced along its length as the screw turns, until it is pushed through a dye at the end to form whatever shape you want. You can start with deep threads and make them progressively shallower if you want to compress your material before you extrude it.
This reminded both me and R of a time when F was quite small. She had some blocks with holes in them that you could drop marbles through, and messing around as kids will, she forced play-dough through one of the blocks. "Look, Mommy, I'm making a worm!" she said. I admired her worm, and then I told her that that process was called "extrusion" and she could say that she was "extruding" a worm. Then I suggested that she go and tell her daddy that she was extruding a worm. Which she did. R's shock and horror overtook him before he asked could himself how a very small child would know that word and he shouted, "From where?" We've laughed about that ever since, but I'm secretly glad that R is not as mischievous as I am. I don't think I would like it if he was.
Oh well. It was an interesting talk. He showed us a diagram of an extrusion device consisting of a screw being turned by some sort of motor. The stuff being extruded is introduced between the threads at the motor end of the screw and is forced along its length as the screw turns, until it is pushed through a dye at the end to form whatever shape you want. You can start with deep threads and make them progressively shallower if you want to compress your material before you extrude it.
This reminded both me and R of a time when F was quite small. She had some blocks with holes in them that you could drop marbles through, and messing around as kids will, she forced play-dough through one of the blocks. "Look, Mommy, I'm making a worm!" she said. I admired her worm, and then I told her that that process was called "extrusion" and she could say that she was "extruding" a worm. Then I suggested that she go and tell her daddy that she was extruding a worm. Which she did. R's shock and horror overtook him before he asked could himself how a very small child would know that word and he shouted, "From where?" We've laughed about that ever since, but I'm secretly glad that R is not as mischievous as I am. I don't think I would like it if he was.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
I've been thinking about this:
Thousands of Katrina Victims Evicted
Some verbiage from the article:
Hauling everything he owned in a plastic garbage bag, Darryl Travis walked out of the chandeliered lobby of the Crowne Plaza, joining the exodus of Hurricane Katrina refugees evicted from their hotel rooms across the country Tuesday.
The occupants of more than 4,500 government-paid hotel rooms were ordered to turn in their keys Tuesday, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency began cutting off money to pay for their stays.
...
Travis, 24, and his five childhood friends all in their 20s had been living on the floor of another evacuee's hotel room, never having registered.
"All I got is a couple pairs of pants and some shirts. The pressure is on," said Jonathan Gautier, 26, one of the six, who was also carrying a single plastic bag filled with clothes.
After what, 6 months, the pressure is now on?
Since this article came out almost two weeks ago, I've had a few thoughts.
There were families who came to Memphis right after the hurricane. The paper had articles about them being helped by various churches and so forth, to get some kind of housing, jobs, their kids in school, while they worked out what they needed to do. Lots of people's employers helped. Some are living in their houses as they fix them up, or in trailers if their houses aren't livable yet. Plenty of people apparently decided enough was enough, have permanently moved elsewhere and are going on.
And then you have these people who apparently are taking it one day at a time. As long as they eat and have somewhere to lay their head, they are taking no responsibility and are not looking to the future at all.
I suppose FEMA was and is trying to do the right thing. It's also possible that spending billions of dollars on post-Katrina efforts (when it's no longer an emergency) seemed the best thing in light of the mostly-undeserved black eye it got immediately after the disaster, and if that's the reasoning, somebody needs to get their butt kicked.
Because before you give somebody money to help them get back on their feet, you need to find out if they were on their feet to begin with. These people clearly have no coping skills whatsoever, and most likely never have had. Spending half a year sleeping on a hotel floor did nothing for these healthy young people. Not for their self-esteem (she said seriously), not for their welfare, not for their future, not for their ability to be productive citizens, which is an obligation we all have. It must be an obligation, because while I am willing for my tax dollars to go to helping people, I am never asked if I want them to.
The condition of Travis and his friends is such that the hurricane might as well have happened yesterday.
I hate it when people play Monday-morning quarterback, but I'm going to anyway: There needed to be some triage when those hotel rooms started being paid for. Some control, because apparently a bunch of people were squatting in those hotels and FEMA didn't even know it (but if there's damage I'm sure the gov't will be billed for it). Some of these people clearly needed some kind of counseling as to how you get and keep a job, rent an apartment, and other things that healthy young grown-ups in America ought to expect to do. It was a WASTE of the refugees' time and of taxpayers' money to allow this situation to go on so many MONTHS after that wretched hurricane. No one was helped by this. They might as well have not bothered.
Thousands of Katrina Victims Evicted
Some verbiage from the article:
Hauling everything he owned in a plastic garbage bag, Darryl Travis walked out of the chandeliered lobby of the Crowne Plaza, joining the exodus of Hurricane Katrina refugees evicted from their hotel rooms across the country Tuesday.
The occupants of more than 4,500 government-paid hotel rooms were ordered to turn in their keys Tuesday, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency began cutting off money to pay for their stays.
...
Travis, 24, and his five childhood friends all in their 20s had been living on the floor of another evacuee's hotel room, never having registered.
"All I got is a couple pairs of pants and some shirts. The pressure is on," said Jonathan Gautier, 26, one of the six, who was also carrying a single plastic bag filled with clothes.
After what, 6 months, the pressure is now on?
Since this article came out almost two weeks ago, I've had a few thoughts.
There were families who came to Memphis right after the hurricane. The paper had articles about them being helped by various churches and so forth, to get some kind of housing, jobs, their kids in school, while they worked out what they needed to do. Lots of people's employers helped. Some are living in their houses as they fix them up, or in trailers if their houses aren't livable yet. Plenty of people apparently decided enough was enough, have permanently moved elsewhere and are going on.
And then you have these people who apparently are taking it one day at a time. As long as they eat and have somewhere to lay their head, they are taking no responsibility and are not looking to the future at all.
I suppose FEMA was and is trying to do the right thing. It's also possible that spending billions of dollars on post-Katrina efforts (when it's no longer an emergency) seemed the best thing in light of the mostly-undeserved black eye it got immediately after the disaster, and if that's the reasoning, somebody needs to get their butt kicked.
Because before you give somebody money to help them get back on their feet, you need to find out if they were on their feet to begin with. These people clearly have no coping skills whatsoever, and most likely never have had. Spending half a year sleeping on a hotel floor did nothing for these healthy young people. Not for their self-esteem (she said seriously), not for their welfare, not for their future, not for their ability to be productive citizens, which is an obligation we all have. It must be an obligation, because while I am willing for my tax dollars to go to helping people, I am never asked if I want them to.
The condition of Travis and his friends is such that the hurricane might as well have happened yesterday.
I hate it when people play Monday-morning quarterback, but I'm going to anyway: There needed to be some triage when those hotel rooms started being paid for. Some control, because apparently a bunch of people were squatting in those hotels and FEMA didn't even know it (but if there's damage I'm sure the gov't will be billed for it). Some of these people clearly needed some kind of counseling as to how you get and keep a job, rent an apartment, and other things that healthy young grown-ups in America ought to expect to do. It was a WASTE of the refugees' time and of taxpayers' money to allow this situation to go on so many MONTHS after that wretched hurricane. No one was helped by this. They might as well have not bothered.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
File this under "duh" I guess.
Danes say apology would be pointless
First of all, "Danes" aren't saying an apology is pointless. The foreign minister is saying it. He does not comprise the entire population of Denmark. Presumably there are Danes, especially Muslim Danes, who do not feel that an apology would be pointless.
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the government had no reason to apologize for the drawings first published in one of Denmark’s largest newspapers.
“First, you cannot apologize for something you have not done,” Moeller said in a telephone interview. [I'm with him there. It wouldn't be pointless for the newspaper to apologize, but it probably would for the government to, because they didn't print the cartoons and didn't direct the newspaper to ... as far as we know.] “Second, nothing illegal has been done because no one has been found guilty by a court.”
There's the stupidity. You don't apologize only because something is illegal or because it has been found to be illegal in court. You apologize when you realize and are ready to admit that you are in the wrong. That frequently has absolutely nothing to do with the law.
Which leads me to the idea I keep seeing expressed, that because we have free speech and free press in the US, American newspapers are somehow obligated to print those cartoons. "I can, therefore I have to" is the way we all reasoned when we were two years old. If we lived past toddlerhood, we learned better. I will say that if the local paper does not print the cartoons, I'll appreciate their restraint, and I'll appreciate it even more if they apply it to things that might unnecessarily offend me in future, even though I am not threatening anyone.
Danes say apology would be pointless
First of all, "Danes" aren't saying an apology is pointless. The foreign minister is saying it. He does not comprise the entire population of Denmark. Presumably there are Danes, especially Muslim Danes, who do not feel that an apology would be pointless.
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the government had no reason to apologize for the drawings first published in one of Denmark’s largest newspapers.
“First, you cannot apologize for something you have not done,” Moeller said in a telephone interview. [I'm with him there. It wouldn't be pointless for the newspaper to apologize, but it probably would for the government to, because they didn't print the cartoons and didn't direct the newspaper to ... as far as we know.] “Second, nothing illegal has been done because no one has been found guilty by a court.”
There's the stupidity. You don't apologize only because something is illegal or because it has been found to be illegal in court. You apologize when you realize and are ready to admit that you are in the wrong. That frequently has absolutely nothing to do with the law.
Which leads me to the idea I keep seeing expressed, that because we have free speech and free press in the US, American newspapers are somehow obligated to print those cartoons. "I can, therefore I have to" is the way we all reasoned when we were two years old. If we lived past toddlerhood, we learned better. I will say that if the local paper does not print the cartoons, I'll appreciate their restraint, and I'll appreciate it even more if they apply it to things that might unnecessarily offend me in future, even though I am not threatening anyone.
Friday, February 10, 2006
I miss my baby. And I know she misses me. But at least she has Bunny. F received Bunny as a present on her first birthday, and they've been inseparable ever since. Bunny went to daycare every day until kindergarten started. She went to the pediatrician's office, the grocery store, my parents' house, R's parents' house, her friends' houses - if F went, Bunny went too. And as you can see, Bunny was no tiny object. Sometimes when I had to carry the two of them it felt as though I had twins. 
Here's Bunny at the Living Dinosaurs exhibit. She appears to have been eating a brochure.And yes, Bunny went off to college last Fall. She's old and fragile and spends all of her time on F's bed. Sometimes when F's friends are feeling fragile they're allowed to hold Bunny while sipping a cup of F's vanilla chamomile tea.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Nothing like setting an example of the behavior you expect from other people.
Iran to publish Holocaust cartoons
It seems to me that once a person takes on the behavior he's been criticizing, he loses the right to criticize it.
Iran to publish Holocaust cartoons
It seems to me that once a person takes on the behavior he's been criticizing, he loses the right to criticize it.
Monday, February 06, 2006
To carry on with the 20's theme I started with "Sally Brown":
I love the Canadian Brass. I have their Red Hot Jazz CD in my car and I listen to it all the time. The trumpet work in "Black Bottom Stomp" is so delicate you would swear you're listening to traditional Dixieland clarinet. "Kitten on the Keys" is just delightful. The conversation that takes place between different instruments in "Mamie's Blues", plus the triple-against-duple rhythm, is really cool. But my favorite track is "12th Street Rag". The rhythms get more and more complex through the piece. The trouble is that they get stuck in my head, and when I'm at work doing the usual tedious paperwork I have to do I find myself tapping those rhythms out with my pen. I know it probably drives my office mate nuts.
Among others, I also have the Essential Canadian Brass CD. I like it well enough but it jumps a bit from one style to another. There are two tracks that I'd add to my "Red Hot Jazz" CD if I could. One is "Beale Street Blues", which features the same conversation-among-instruments thing that "Mamie's Blues" has. The other is "Tuba Tiger Rag". "Tiger Rag" is also known as "Hold That Tiger" and it's been a favorite fight song for college football teams for decades. This version, which features their world-class tuba player, makes you feel like you're at a football game wearing a raccoon coat and drinking a toddy.
I'd rip some of these tracks and upload mp3s for the listening pleasure of the cool cats who read my blog, but since they're copyrighted, that would be illegal.
I love the Canadian Brass. I have their Red Hot Jazz CD in my car and I listen to it all the time. The trumpet work in "Black Bottom Stomp" is so delicate you would swear you're listening to traditional Dixieland clarinet. "Kitten on the Keys" is just delightful. The conversation that takes place between different instruments in "Mamie's Blues", plus the triple-against-duple rhythm, is really cool. But my favorite track is "12th Street Rag". The rhythms get more and more complex through the piece. The trouble is that they get stuck in my head, and when I'm at work doing the usual tedious paperwork I have to do I find myself tapping those rhythms out with my pen. I know it probably drives my office mate nuts.
Among others, I also have the Essential Canadian Brass CD. I like it well enough but it jumps a bit from one style to another. There are two tracks that I'd add to my "Red Hot Jazz" CD if I could. One is "Beale Street Blues", which features the same conversation-among-instruments thing that "Mamie's Blues" has. The other is "Tuba Tiger Rag". "Tiger Rag" is also known as "Hold That Tiger" and it's been a favorite fight song for college football teams for decades. This version, which features their world-class tuba player, makes you feel like you're at a football game wearing a raccoon coat and drinking a toddy.
I'd rip some of these tracks and upload mp3s for the listening pleasure of the cool cats who read my blog, but since they're copyrighted, that would be illegal.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Friday, February 03, 2006
There's an interesting post in Online Journal today: Speaking in Tongues. Tunku Varadarajan reports that the mayor of Los Angeles delivered a response to the State of the Union address in Spanish.
Why not a gay response? A Teamster response? A vegan response? A gangsta response? More nitty-grittily: Why not a response in Farsi or Korean--languages spoken by people toward whom Mr. Villaraigosa has no fewer mayoral duties than he does toward his Hispanophones? There is, also, a radical question from which there should be no glib escape: If response there must be from the mayor of Los Angeles, why not one in plain old English?
I'm generally cold to the argument that people have to be stamped out of a cookie-cutter to be American. I think he does have an argument that the Persian and Korean, not to mention non-Hispanic whitebread American, people in Los Angeles might wonder if he takes his responsibilities toward them seriously. I have wondered that myself, when our black mayor has gone on the black radio stations I hear at work urging voters to vote for black candidates so "our people don't lose the gains we've made". That would make me feel a lot funnier if I didn't know some white people who've called the mayor's action center about some problem or other and gotten immediate results.
But this:
I am a first-generation migrant to this country. I believe that in settling abroad, foreigners make a brutal contract with their land of adoption. They may speak their language, eat their food and practice their religion--but at home or by private arrangement. That is as far as I would go with multiculturalism. All else--including an insistence on a public affirmation of ethnic frills and fancies--cripples the process of integration.
Does this go too far? I enjoy the ethnic character of different parts of my city. Areas where the restaurant signs or church marquees are in Spanish or some Asian language I can't recognize. Nobody is telling me I can't act like an nth generation Scottish-descent white Southerner.
On the other hand, the distress being reported in the Muslim world over the Mohammed cartoons is evidence of a severe culture clash. We in the Western world are used to being offended by cartoons (among other things). Maybe we shouldn't put up with these things, but we do. We've made a more-or-less conscious decision to tolerate a whole lot of offensive garbage because our freedom of speech is extremely precious to us, and we haven't been able to work out a way to eliminate the garbage without encroaching on our liberty. One could say that if western Europe had not seen a huge influx of immigrants from North Africa and other Muslim areas, Mohammed wouldn't have been brought to their attention and their cartoons would be about something else; so that if people have got to keep their culture exactly like it is, perhaps they should stay at home. But that's not realistic today. I used to read about globalization all the time and I thought it was a meaningless buzz-word. But it's not, it's happening in the economy, on the internet, and in real life as people mix together in unprecedented numbers.
Maybe it would be good if cartoonists developed some restraint about drawing cartoons that are gratuitously offensive - not because of fear or censorship, but just to be civil. It would also be good if Muslim women who have immigrated to France or Denmark enjoyed the same personal freedoms that ethnic French and Danish women do. Culture-clashing could be a very positive thing. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out when the dust settles. I wonder if that will happen in my lifetime.
Why not a gay response? A Teamster response? A vegan response? A gangsta response? More nitty-grittily: Why not a response in Farsi or Korean--languages spoken by people toward whom Mr. Villaraigosa has no fewer mayoral duties than he does toward his Hispanophones? There is, also, a radical question from which there should be no glib escape: If response there must be from the mayor of Los Angeles, why not one in plain old English?
I'm generally cold to the argument that people have to be stamped out of a cookie-cutter to be American. I think he does have an argument that the Persian and Korean, not to mention non-Hispanic whitebread American, people in Los Angeles might wonder if he takes his responsibilities toward them seriously. I have wondered that myself, when our black mayor has gone on the black radio stations I hear at work urging voters to vote for black candidates so "our people don't lose the gains we've made". That would make me feel a lot funnier if I didn't know some white people who've called the mayor's action center about some problem or other and gotten immediate results.
But this:
I am a first-generation migrant to this country. I believe that in settling abroad, foreigners make a brutal contract with their land of adoption. They may speak their language, eat their food and practice their religion--but at home or by private arrangement. That is as far as I would go with multiculturalism. All else--including an insistence on a public affirmation of ethnic frills and fancies--cripples the process of integration.
Does this go too far? I enjoy the ethnic character of different parts of my city. Areas where the restaurant signs or church marquees are in Spanish or some Asian language I can't recognize. Nobody is telling me I can't act like an nth generation Scottish-descent white Southerner.
On the other hand, the distress being reported in the Muslim world over the Mohammed cartoons is evidence of a severe culture clash. We in the Western world are used to being offended by cartoons (among other things). Maybe we shouldn't put up with these things, but we do. We've made a more-or-less conscious decision to tolerate a whole lot of offensive garbage because our freedom of speech is extremely precious to us, and we haven't been able to work out a way to eliminate the garbage without encroaching on our liberty. One could say that if western Europe had not seen a huge influx of immigrants from North Africa and other Muslim areas, Mohammed wouldn't have been brought to their attention and their cartoons would be about something else; so that if people have got to keep their culture exactly like it is, perhaps they should stay at home. But that's not realistic today. I used to read about globalization all the time and I thought it was a meaningless buzz-word. But it's not, it's happening in the economy, on the internet, and in real life as people mix together in unprecedented numbers.
Maybe it would be good if cartoonists developed some restraint about drawing cartoons that are gratuitously offensive - not because of fear or censorship, but just to be civil. It would also be good if Muslim women who have immigrated to France or Denmark enjoyed the same personal freedoms that ethnic French and Danish women do. Culture-clashing could be a very positive thing. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out when the dust settles. I wonder if that will happen in my lifetime.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
More high school lit:
The Highwayman
PART ONE
THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.
PART TWO
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
* * * * * *
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
- Afred Noyes
The Highwayman
PART ONE
THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.
PART TWO
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
* * * * * *
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
- Afred Noyes
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