27 February 2011 (AM)

Workout notes
First, 5 miles (5.1 actually) on the treadmill in 1 hour (58:40 for 5) walking fairly hard; 15 minutes easy, 25 minutes of 1-1, 20 of 2-1.
Then I met Lynn for a slower 8 mile walk on the East Peoria trail; there was some snow on the ground and it took us 2:28 to get to the place where the trail changed and back. We saw a few cardinals; though the pace was slow and leisurely it was good practice for walking with tired legs.

Posts

Ok, I know why he is doing this. But much of our economic trouble comes from policies which concentrate wealth at the very top.

I’ve heard the current situation described in the following way: “there is a plate of 12 cookies and in comes a CEO, a tea-party member and a union member. The CEO grabs 11 cookies for himself and then tells the tea-party member: “watch that union guy; he wants part of your cookie!”

More on this: Thom Hartman reads the infamous “99′er who is at the end of his rope” letter. I don’t know whether the letter is authentic or not; it sounds a bit like fiction written to make a valid point.

But it is hell for someone that age to try to get even a low-paying job.

Satire: oh noes! Gays are harming traditional marriage!

WASHINGTON—Reports continue to pour in from around the nation today of helpless Americans being forcibly taken from their marital unions after President Obama dropped the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this week, leaving the institution completely vulnerable to roving bands of homosexuals. “It was just awful—they smashed through our living room window, one of them said ‘I’ve had my eye on you, Roger,’ and then they dragged my husband off kicking and screaming,” said Cleveland-area homemaker Rita Ellington, one of the latest victims whose defenseless marriage was overrun by the hordes of battle-ready gays that had been clambering at the gates of matrimony since the DOMA went into effect in 1996. “Oh dear God, why did they remove the protection provided by this vital piece of legislation? My children! What will I tell my children?” A video communique was sent to the media late yesterday from what appears to be the as-yet unidentified leader of the gay marauders, who, adorned in terrifying warpaint, announced “Richard Dickson of Ames, Iowa. We’re coming for you next. Put on something nice.

(yes, I know…it is The Onion….)

Education
A teacher laments that she doesn’t want to be a teacher anymore. I’ll post one of the parts that interested me the most:

As my class sizes increased, so did the needs of my students. Normally when I would teach something, I would have a handful of students who didn’t get it. I rarely had kids I couldn’t get to make progress. But as the classes got bigger, that began to change. More students with special needs were being mainstreamed into my classroom. I was getting kids in class who had been in America less than six months who spoke no English, with very little help or support. I crazily began to take all kinds of classes, do research on how to reach kids with autism, ADD, emotional disturbances, limited English proficiency—you name it, I studied the best ways to overcome disadvantages. I’ve always had a never-say-die attitude, so I worked my butt off to reach everyone in this increasingly diverse classroom with fewer and fewer resources. [...]

Then the past few years a few of the buildings in our district didn’t meet their AYP (adequate yearly progress.) The district began to look for ways to help these building to succeed. The focus on test scores escalated to a crazy level. The teachers in one of the elementary buildings in my district were told they could no longer teach anything besides reading, math, and science because those were the subjects that were tested. Our building wasn’t ever told that specifically, but it was understood that we were to focus on practices that would improve our students’ test-taking skills.
The district decided to implement required core instructional materials that were mandated to everyone. Suddenly, the creativity of the job was being removed. They wanted everybody to teach the same materials, the same way. I’ve never been one to buck the system, so I began to wrack my brain for how to use these new materials and still keep the lessons interesting for my students.
At the same time, class sizes and special needs were growing. The behavior classroom was closed and its students were mainstreamed into the regular classroom. I tried to become an expert on dealing with anger issues. I tried to learn how to help fifth graders with severe disabilities, limited mobility, and cognitive levels of very young children, all in my regular classroom now filled with 30-35 students. My job became an even greater challenge than it had always been before, but still my attitude was to think “bring it on!” I just couldn’t fathom the idea that my natural teaching ability wasn’t exactly what was needed to solve any and all challenges that came my way. [...]

for the first time, our school didn’t meet AYP because two few English Language Developing students in the entire school didn’t pass their reading benchmarks.
When I heard this, I instantly thought of the two English Language Learners in my class who hadn’t passed their reading tests last year and how unfair I thought it was that they even counted on our test scores when they came to our school in January and were absent at least twice a week from that point on. I was wondering how I could possibly have gotten them to benchmark level in three days a week for three months. I was thinking how if only those two students hadn’t counted on our scores, we would’ve met AYP as a school. When I mentioned it to my principal, she just said there are no excuses. We aren’t allowed to have any excuses. We have to get kids to the level they need to be no matter what the circumstances. I thought of the little boy I had with an IQ of 87 who could barely read. I thought of the little girl in a wheelchair who’d had 23 operations on tumors on her body in her eleven years, and the girl who moved from Mexico straight into my class and learned to speak English before my eyes, but couldn’t pass the state test. Somehow it doesn’t feel like making excuses to acknowledge that they had good reason not to pass their benchmarks.

There is the kicker: the last thing that we need is some clueless leader who says “oh, that is just an excuse”. The bottom line is that students show up to school starting with wide ranges of abilities and, like it or not, initial ability has a great dealt to do with performance. As far as “raising the bar and they will meet it”: ask yourself how well you’d do if you needed to, say, run a mile in under 5 minutes and bench press 400 pounds to keep your job. You wouldn’t be able to, period. Some things are impossible to do..and trying to educated a class of 30 or more students with a huge variance in abilities is all but impossible…for anyone.

Movies The King’s Speech: fiction, at least with regards to the relationship of Winston Churchill to “the Palace”.

Science The USDA is introducing an invasive species (wasps) to fight the emerald ash borer beetle:
This was done after studying the ash borer in China and determining that a type of wasp was effective at various stages of the beetle’s life; a study was done to determine if this wasp would cause harm to the environment and it appears that it won’t. Via Conservation Report:

Blue eyed-humans: blue eyes result from a relatively recent mutation:

-IMAGEALT-
Reese Witherspoon.
Associated Press

People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research.

A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before then, there were no blue eyes.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.

The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin.

“A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch,’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes,” Eiberg said.

The genetic switch is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and rather than completely turning off the gene, the switch limits its action, which reduces the production of melanin in the iris. In effect, the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue.

Superstition
Enjoy some non-standard woo: