One of my favorite movies of all time is Ghost World (2001). It stars a young Scarlett Johansson, Thora Birch (American Beauty) and Steve Buscemi (Fargo).
The movie opens with Thora Birch's character dancing in her room to a video she is watching. Today, listening to an NPR discussion of Bollywood movies, I remembered the video her character was watching. Jaan Pehechaan Ho, from the Indian film Gumnaam.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Punxsutawney Phil in Jacksonville
I posted something earlier about the local school system, and it was on the serious side. But I was looking back at one I did a couple of weeks ago about Groundhog Day, and I got to thinking: What if Punxsutawney Phil lived in Jacksonville? (side note: according to this web site, the Punxsutawney Phil Beanie Baby is no longer available!)
Back to Phil in Jax:
First, we've established that groundhogs live about 10 years or so. I don't know if the dog-years calculation applies. They are groundhogs, not grounddogs. In any event, Phil is around school age. I don't care whether he's 50 or 60 in groundhog years. If his birth certificate says 6 or older, he's got to be in school. It's the law. Unless he's outside workin' on daddy's truck.
Second, I imagine that Phil's parents, if living, did not have a steady income. Phil's gonna have to go to public school. He can dream about running track or playing tennis at The Bolles School, but it ain't gonna happen.
Third, Phil has little legs. He won't be walking to school (too far) or biking (pedals too far away). It's the bus for Phil. He's gonna get picked on. But for once, his species will be on the bus, not under it.
Fourth, poor Phil's little groundhog liver, kidneys and pancreas are gonna be in turmoil when he gets done eatin' at the school cafeteria. Groundhogs don't survive long on name brand sodas, pizza and Doritos. Or as listed on the Duval County school cafeteria menu: "Brain Fud"
Fifth, Phil will be the top student in his class, as he will be the only member of the class without an Xbox 360 and a copy of Guitar Hero.
Sixth, there will be some social awkwardness. The tiny lice that so merrily prance in his fur as part of a perfectly natural symbiotic relationship will not be appreciated by his classmates' parents when they appear in little Madison and Taylor's carefully placed hair.
Seventh, following a Jacksonville schoolboy tradition, on February 2 when Phil pops his head out of the hole and sees his shadow, he'll whip out a glock and fire three slugs into his shadow's pea-sized brain. That is, if the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office doesn't open fire on the shadow first. Either way, won't be six weeks of winter next year!
Back to Phil in Jax:
First, we've established that groundhogs live about 10 years or so. I don't know if the dog-years calculation applies. They are groundhogs, not grounddogs. In any event, Phil is around school age. I don't care whether he's 50 or 60 in groundhog years. If his birth certificate says 6 or older, he's got to be in school. It's the law. Unless he's outside workin' on daddy's truck.
Second, I imagine that Phil's parents, if living, did not have a steady income. Phil's gonna have to go to public school. He can dream about running track or playing tennis at The Bolles School, but it ain't gonna happen.
Third, Phil has little legs. He won't be walking to school (too far) or biking (pedals too far away). It's the bus for Phil. He's gonna get picked on. But for once, his species will be on the bus, not under it.
Fourth, poor Phil's little groundhog liver, kidneys and pancreas are gonna be in turmoil when he gets done eatin' at the school cafeteria. Groundhogs don't survive long on name brand sodas, pizza and Doritos. Or as listed on the Duval County school cafeteria menu: "Brain Fud"
Fifth, Phil will be the top student in his class, as he will be the only member of the class without an Xbox 360 and a copy of Guitar Hero.
Sixth, there will be some social awkwardness. The tiny lice that so merrily prance in his fur as part of a perfectly natural symbiotic relationship will not be appreciated by his classmates' parents when they appear in little Madison and Taylor's carefully placed hair.
Seventh, following a Jacksonville schoolboy tradition, on February 2 when Phil pops his head out of the hole and sees his shadow, he'll whip out a glock and fire three slugs into his shadow's pea-sized brain. That is, if the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office doesn't open fire on the shadow first. Either way, won't be six weeks of winter next year!
Labels:
Miscellaneous
School Funding
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about statewide budget cuts in Florida, and everywhere else. Explain to me why those budget cuts are hitting schools as hard as they are hitting other areas. Shouldn't schools be insulated, at least somewhat, from the economy?
Perhaps that's why Americans do not have confidence in our place in the world. We know -- because we hear it on the news all the time -- that our schools are slipping. With each passing year, kids are getting less in the way of education, arts and physical activity.
By the time they get to undergrad, it's too late to fix the problem. Many undergraduate programs are reduced to video presentations in huge classes, or conducted online, with minimal little direct contact or feedback. And that was before the undergrad institutions faced budget cuts!
Why then are public schools suffering in the budget crunch? Can't something else suffer disproportionately?
In Jacksonville, school money has taken a back seat for a long time -- all the way in the back of the bus -- to the Sheriff's office. We have a terribly high murder rate, so the solution is more officers, and groups of citizens writing reports about why this is happening to us.
When I say "solution" I mean short term solution. More officers make us feel safer. Maybe, just maybe, it slows down the murder rate while we finish our reports. It's just a band aid, though. The real culprit is the Duval County school system, with a high school dropout rate around 50%. That's not a new statistic. Things have been bad in this county (and Dade) for a long long time. Think maybe them chickens are comin' home to roost and showing up in the crime stats?
Maybe cleaning up education (see, e.g., obliterating the FCAT, the prep for which bores students to tears) would produce more long term benefits in the crime statistics. But the current slate of politicians won't be around for that. Won't get credit for it. Band aids, on the other hand, sound really good on t.v. Plus, we're all scared of crime. If we're scared, we want it fixed. Now! Bad education? That's kiiinnddda scary, but it's a slow kind of scary. We can deal with it later.
We'll delay production of bright, creative and motivated citizens, because we're skeeered of black people with guns. Who's fault is that?
Maybe we ought to put ourselves in position to allow the U.S. to maintain (or re-achieve, depending on your viewpoint) its place in the world. Hell, right now we can't even make a decent car.
Meanwhile the feds are giving money to banks for taking unnecessary risks, to bail out people who took unnecessary risks with their homes. And a slice of the pie goes to the car manufacturers -- anyone who was born in the 70s or later could see this comin'. How is any of that money going to work its way back into the educational system?
Soon we'll be too dumb to care. And that, of course, is when we'll get the money. Because the money goes to the dumb and the greedy.
Imagine how pissed I would be if I actually had kids!
Perhaps that's why Americans do not have confidence in our place in the world. We know -- because we hear it on the news all the time -- that our schools are slipping. With each passing year, kids are getting less in the way of education, arts and physical activity.
By the time they get to undergrad, it's too late to fix the problem. Many undergraduate programs are reduced to video presentations in huge classes, or conducted online, with minimal little direct contact or feedback. And that was before the undergrad institutions faced budget cuts!
Why then are public schools suffering in the budget crunch? Can't something else suffer disproportionately?
In Jacksonville, school money has taken a back seat for a long time -- all the way in the back of the bus -- to the Sheriff's office. We have a terribly high murder rate, so the solution is more officers, and groups of citizens writing reports about why this is happening to us.
When I say "solution" I mean short term solution. More officers make us feel safer. Maybe, just maybe, it slows down the murder rate while we finish our reports. It's just a band aid, though. The real culprit is the Duval County school system, with a high school dropout rate around 50%. That's not a new statistic. Things have been bad in this county (and Dade) for a long long time. Think maybe them chickens are comin' home to roost and showing up in the crime stats?
Maybe cleaning up education (see, e.g., obliterating the FCAT, the prep for which bores students to tears) would produce more long term benefits in the crime statistics. But the current slate of politicians won't be around for that. Won't get credit for it. Band aids, on the other hand, sound really good on t.v. Plus, we're all scared of crime. If we're scared, we want it fixed. Now! Bad education? That's kiiinnddda scary, but it's a slow kind of scary. We can deal with it later.
We'll delay production of bright, creative and motivated citizens, because we're skeeered of black people with guns. Who's fault is that?
Maybe we ought to put ourselves in position to allow the U.S. to maintain (or re-achieve, depending on your viewpoint) its place in the world. Hell, right now we can't even make a decent car.
Meanwhile the feds are giving money to banks for taking unnecessary risks, to bail out people who took unnecessary risks with their homes. And a slice of the pie goes to the car manufacturers -- anyone who was born in the 70s or later could see this comin'. How is any of that money going to work its way back into the educational system?
Soon we'll be too dumb to care. And that, of course, is when we'll get the money. Because the money goes to the dumb and the greedy.
Imagine how pissed I would be if I actually had kids!
Friday, February 6, 2009
Screw the Republicans. Literally.
"The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life" is a new book with a longwinded title that attempts to do exactly what it says. The authors (Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot) take all those numbers we see on the news -- those misused statistics that are so attractive -- and debunk them.
For instance, consider a news story that says there is a correlation between big hands and better reading comprehension. This is a classic case of two factors being correlated, but not causally related. It may be that these two things go together, but having big hands does not cause better reading. And so they found. Bigger people have bigger hands. Adults are bigger people. Adults are better readers than children, who have small hands.
Or the study that showed Republicans enjoy sex more than Democrats. Good dating tip, I guess. But more men vote Republican than Democrat. And men claim to enjoy sex more than women.
I haven't read the book yet. These examples are from reviews I've seen. The book sounds like the flip side of Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics," which I read a couple of years ago. In Freakonomics, Leavitt explains things like why legalization of abortion has reduced the crime rate.
So in Freakonomics, sometimes things that don't seem to be related, actually are. In the Commonsense Guide, things that seem related, actually are not.
For instance, consider a news story that says there is a correlation between big hands and better reading comprehension. This is a classic case of two factors being correlated, but not causally related. It may be that these two things go together, but having big hands does not cause better reading. And so they found. Bigger people have bigger hands. Adults are bigger people. Adults are better readers than children, who have small hands.
Or the study that showed Republicans enjoy sex more than Democrats. Good dating tip, I guess. But more men vote Republican than Democrat. And men claim to enjoy sex more than women.
I haven't read the book yet. These examples are from reviews I've seen. The book sounds like the flip side of Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics," which I read a couple of years ago. In Freakonomics, Leavitt explains things like why legalization of abortion has reduced the crime rate.
So in Freakonomics, sometimes things that don't seem to be related, actually are. In the Commonsense Guide, things that seem related, actually are not.
Labels:
Literature
Out On a Limb of Your Own Choosing
Last night I went to a lecture by Tukufu Zuberi, from PBS' History Detectives. This guy isn't just a t.v. personality. He's a professor of sociology at University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. A smart guy. His lecture was entitled "Taking A Look Back at Negro League Baseball."
I was excited, because I'm a huge baseball fan and I've read a lot about Negro League baseball. Unfortunately, Professor Zuberi cannot say the same. I'll post the more baseball oriented portions of this rant over on my baseball blog, but my point in this post relates to speakers, lecturers and teachers generally.
It seems to me that if Professor Zuberi is uninformed about baseball he either (a) should not be giving a 100 minute lecture about baseball or (b) he ought to get up to speed before he gives such a speech. Instead, he used baseball as a hook to draw an audience. If you combined everything he said about baseball in this lecture, it might (might) add up to 5 minutes. And much of what he said about baseball was generic references about "those men playing on the field". There was little-to-nothing about baseball's special place in history and race relations. His baseball knowledge was below average for even a casual fan. (Don't most of you know that Babe Ruth hit a lot of home runs? Professor Zuberi thinks he had 700 hits.)
And he knew that he didn't know what he was talking about. Twenty five minutes into the lecture he had yet to mention baseball. He said to the audience "What does this have to do with baseball?" He laughed. He said the baseball stuff was coming, but he wanted to orient us to history so we could understand where he was coming from. Yet he never got to baseball, simply meandering along about racism and "re-remembering history." He knew baseball was not part of the lecture, and he knew we were wondering when he was going to get to it.
Occasionally he'd take a stab at something baseball-related, almost always got it wrong and looked uncomfortable doing it. When someone in the audience would correct his errors, he'd say "I told you I don't play baseball; I'm just a fan." Uh-huh. What does playing baseball have to do with analyzing its place in history? That doesn't make sense. It's the fans and other observers who understand baseball's special status. It's the fans who know the player's names, the stats, the history!
There was exactly one reference to Negro League Baseball in 100 minutes, and that was near the end. It was a reference to Pop Lloyd, and the reason Professor Zuberi knew that name was because he had done an episode of the History Detectives about a field named after Pop Lloyd. I found it strange that he didn't pick up a few baseball things in the course of doing that story.
I'm a faculty member at a graduate school, and sometimes when we hire new faculty members, they will ask me if I have any advice for the classroom. I always start with this: Never pretend to know the answer to something you don't know. The students will figure it out. Always. Your credibility will be shot. And that reputation will stay with you as long as you are here, and perhaps at your next institution too.
So too Professor Zuberi. He is obviously a smart man, a good speaker, and a talented sociologist. He made some good points about the perspective of the various wars, depending on which lenses you were wearing at the time. And he was undoubtedly inspirational to the audience with respect to the way we should think about race.
Yet in a lecture about baseball, he clearly did not know his baseball stuff, and he tried to hide it with generic references and by practically avoiding baseball altogether. His errors were obvious and were caught by the audience quickly. A true baseball fan could mark him as an imposter very early on. The way he talked about the game is the way people talk about it when they don't watch it and never played it and haven't studied it. The last of those is his greatest crime in the context of this lecture.
As smart as he may be on sociological matters, I would not read anything he writes, nor listen to anything he says, because for me his credibility is shot. Had his lecture been called "Re-remembering African American History" I would have been happy about the lecture, and he would have been in his element. Instead, he lured people (including a few former Negro League players) with the promise of baseball, and then not only neglected it, but undermined his own status by fumbling around in an area he does not understand.
Think about that, the next time you have to give a speech of your own. Talk about what you know. And if you are required to speak on a topic that you are underinformed about, get up to speed.
I was excited, because I'm a huge baseball fan and I've read a lot about Negro League baseball. Unfortunately, Professor Zuberi cannot say the same. I'll post the more baseball oriented portions of this rant over on my baseball blog, but my point in this post relates to speakers, lecturers and teachers generally.
It seems to me that if Professor Zuberi is uninformed about baseball he either (a) should not be giving a 100 minute lecture about baseball or (b) he ought to get up to speed before he gives such a speech. Instead, he used baseball as a hook to draw an audience. If you combined everything he said about baseball in this lecture, it might (might) add up to 5 minutes. And much of what he said about baseball was generic references about "those men playing on the field". There was little-to-nothing about baseball's special place in history and race relations. His baseball knowledge was below average for even a casual fan. (Don't most of you know that Babe Ruth hit a lot of home runs? Professor Zuberi thinks he had 700 hits.)
And he knew that he didn't know what he was talking about. Twenty five minutes into the lecture he had yet to mention baseball. He said to the audience "What does this have to do with baseball?" He laughed. He said the baseball stuff was coming, but he wanted to orient us to history so we could understand where he was coming from. Yet he never got to baseball, simply meandering along about racism and "re-remembering history." He knew baseball was not part of the lecture, and he knew we were wondering when he was going to get to it.
Occasionally he'd take a stab at something baseball-related, almost always got it wrong and looked uncomfortable doing it. When someone in the audience would correct his errors, he'd say "I told you I don't play baseball; I'm just a fan." Uh-huh. What does playing baseball have to do with analyzing its place in history? That doesn't make sense. It's the fans and other observers who understand baseball's special status. It's the fans who know the player's names, the stats, the history!
There was exactly one reference to Negro League Baseball in 100 minutes, and that was near the end. It was a reference to Pop Lloyd, and the reason Professor Zuberi knew that name was because he had done an episode of the History Detectives about a field named after Pop Lloyd. I found it strange that he didn't pick up a few baseball things in the course of doing that story.
I'm a faculty member at a graduate school, and sometimes when we hire new faculty members, they will ask me if I have any advice for the classroom. I always start with this: Never pretend to know the answer to something you don't know. The students will figure it out. Always. Your credibility will be shot. And that reputation will stay with you as long as you are here, and perhaps at your next institution too.
So too Professor Zuberi. He is obviously a smart man, a good speaker, and a talented sociologist. He made some good points about the perspective of the various wars, depending on which lenses you were wearing at the time. And he was undoubtedly inspirational to the audience with respect to the way we should think about race.
Yet in a lecture about baseball, he clearly did not know his baseball stuff, and he tried to hide it with generic references and by practically avoiding baseball altogether. His errors were obvious and were caught by the audience quickly. A true baseball fan could mark him as an imposter very early on. The way he talked about the game is the way people talk about it when they don't watch it and never played it and haven't studied it. The last of those is his greatest crime in the context of this lecture.
As smart as he may be on sociological matters, I would not read anything he writes, nor listen to anything he says, because for me his credibility is shot. Had his lecture been called "Re-remembering African American History" I would have been happy about the lecture, and he would have been in his element. Instead, he lured people (including a few former Negro League players) with the promise of baseball, and then not only neglected it, but undermined his own status by fumbling around in an area he does not understand.
Think about that, the next time you have to give a speech of your own. Talk about what you know. And if you are required to speak on a topic that you are underinformed about, get up to speed.
Labels:
Human Arrogance,
Sports
Monday, February 2, 2009
Groundhog Day
So a bunch of people got up on a freezing cold winter morning in Pennsylvania to watch a hole. Actually, that may not even be true. They may simply watch some groundhog owner announcing the results of the owner having already watched a hole.
This has been happening since 1887. In a place with a simply horrible name: Gobblers Knob. Sounds like a fictional setting for a porn flick.
Needless to say, today's Phil is not the original Phil. Even the hardiest groundhogs in captivity live about 10 years. In the wild, they may live up to 6 years, and most live 1-3 years, thanks to traffic. Since all the Phils are in captivity, let's go with an 8 year life span. That's a plenty long life to pass on the weather knowledge to the little uns.
This would be the 15th generation of Phil. The Phil selection process must be interesting. Let's say we have the original Phil (our proverbial Adam) who copulates with the proverbial Eve, groundhog style. Groundhogs have one litter a year, with 2-9 pups. Which of those became the next Phil? Is it like royalty, where the oldest male gets the job? Is there fratricide, where one of the younger males knocks off the older male to rise in standing? Have there been any female Phils in years where there was no male lineage, or did the folks in Gobbler's Knob substitute a male groundhog just in case someone decided to look between its little legs?
And how do we know if the damn thing sees its shadow or not? I suspect a groundhog does not even know what a shadow is. Perhaps a frightened little expression appears on his face at the sight of a silhouetted apparition of himself, allowing the observers to say he saw it. Or perhaps a groundhog expert, trained in the ways of the groundhog (much like Carl in Caddyshack) interprets his actions as yay or nay.
Apparently in 112 tries he has seen his shadow 97 times. Why all the hubub, if he's going to predict six more weeks of winter 87% of the time? Besides, it's Pennsylvania, and it's February 2. Six more weeks of winter isn't exactly going out on a limb. A human with a groundhog sized brain could tell you that.
What happened in the other ten years? That is, if the first groundhog day was 1887 (122 years ago), but his record is 97-15, what happened in the other ten years? Sadly, we'll never know. The official site says for those years there is "no record". The last year with no record was 1899, which is the year the Groundhog Club was formed. "God forbid we miss any records hereafter" they declared!
In any event, no one takes this seriously anymore...not even the official Groundhog Club. On the other hand, I wonder if there is a single morning television show, whether network or local, that will not include it in this morning's stories.
Ubiquitous television news stories, and people standing in freezing weather, all to observe a tradition that came from the Germans use of a hedgehog (porcupine) in connection with predicting the weather on Candlemas thousands of years ago. As if religion does not serve as sufficient evidence, this whole groundhog thing reminds me what a strange species we are.
This has been happening since 1887. In a place with a simply horrible name: Gobblers Knob. Sounds like a fictional setting for a porn flick.
Needless to say, today's Phil is not the original Phil. Even the hardiest groundhogs in captivity live about 10 years. In the wild, they may live up to 6 years, and most live 1-3 years, thanks to traffic. Since all the Phils are in captivity, let's go with an 8 year life span. That's a plenty long life to pass on the weather knowledge to the little uns.
This would be the 15th generation of Phil. The Phil selection process must be interesting. Let's say we have the original Phil (our proverbial Adam) who copulates with the proverbial Eve, groundhog style. Groundhogs have one litter a year, with 2-9 pups. Which of those became the next Phil? Is it like royalty, where the oldest male gets the job? Is there fratricide, where one of the younger males knocks off the older male to rise in standing? Have there been any female Phils in years where there was no male lineage, or did the folks in Gobbler's Knob substitute a male groundhog just in case someone decided to look between its little legs?
And how do we know if the damn thing sees its shadow or not? I suspect a groundhog does not even know what a shadow is. Perhaps a frightened little expression appears on his face at the sight of a silhouetted apparition of himself, allowing the observers to say he saw it. Or perhaps a groundhog expert, trained in the ways of the groundhog (much like Carl in Caddyshack) interprets his actions as yay or nay.
Apparently in 112 tries he has seen his shadow 97 times. Why all the hubub, if he's going to predict six more weeks of winter 87% of the time? Besides, it's Pennsylvania, and it's February 2. Six more weeks of winter isn't exactly going out on a limb. A human with a groundhog sized brain could tell you that.
What happened in the other ten years? That is, if the first groundhog day was 1887 (122 years ago), but his record is 97-15, what happened in the other ten years? Sadly, we'll never know. The official site says for those years there is "no record". The last year with no record was 1899, which is the year the Groundhog Club was formed. "God forbid we miss any records hereafter" they declared!
In any event, no one takes this seriously anymore...not even the official Groundhog Club. On the other hand, I wonder if there is a single morning television show, whether network or local, that will not include it in this morning's stories.
Ubiquitous television news stories, and people standing in freezing weather, all to observe a tradition that came from the Germans use of a hedgehog (porcupine) in connection with predicting the weather on Candlemas thousands of years ago. As if religion does not serve as sufficient evidence, this whole groundhog thing reminds me what a strange species we are.
Labels:
Miscellaneous
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