I knew I shouda taken that left turn at Albuquerque

I went for a short hike up Little Si this morning.  The weather's great, and I'm feeling fat, so I figured it was about time I got some exercise.  My plan is to do a hike a week for the foreseeable future, working my way from easy hikes like Little Si, to tougher hikes like Mailbox. The only problems were finding my way. First, I missed the trailhead and drove around North Bend a bit before finding it.  Then on the way up, I came to a fork in the trail, and didn't quite believe the sign (which had been heavily defaced) showing the way.  So I took the uphill route, thinking that would get me to the top. It went well for a while before I realized that I was in a long downhill stretch that didn't turn back up hill.  So I carried on hoping that the side trail I was on would eventually get me back to the parking lot. It did, but not before I had a few moments of fear thinking that I'd end up on the other side of the mountain and have to either go around the mountain or back the way I came.

Next stop: REI, to get a hiking guide complete with trail maps.

My new job

I did something yesterday that I haven't done for a long time.  I went to work. Like any first day at a new job, I was nervous and excited.  I didn't know what I should wear, and I didn't know what to expect. I assumed that I should get there early to fill out some paperwork and get a bit of an orientation, and make a plan for the day.  As it turned out, I about fifteen minutes early at 9:45, and no one was there. I hung around watching the students slowly filter in.  Then a couple of administrative types came in and told me that Inga (my supervisor) would be in soon.  She finally came in at 10:10.  She took me aside, and after barely introducing herself, gave me a word game and assigned four students to play it with me. Two of the students were 40ish Somali women; the other two were a couple from Nepal via Bhutan.  The Somali women had been here for nine months, the Nepali (Nepalese?) couple had been here for eight days after spending eight years in a refugee camp.  The Somali women barely spoke English at all, the Nepali husband was actually pretty good, and his wife was somewhere in between him and the Somalis in language skills.  The game that was assigned was pretty dumb, and after a few rounds, we just had a general discussion about who we were and where we came from. I bonded with them by sharing the story of my immigration from the wilds of Canada.

After an hour and a half, the class took a break.  After the break, I was assigned another five students, this time a group of men from Kenya. They all spoke quite passable English, so we didn't even bother playing that dumb game.  They told me what they needed was help with written English, and particularly help with filling out application forms.  All of the men were unemployed, and all had been frustrated in their job searches by the difficulty they had in filling out forms. They were also intimidated by the civics and English proficiency tests for US citizenship. I spent a bit more than an hour with these guys and promised them that next time, I'd come prepared to help them.

At 1PM, we all packed up and left. I talked to Inga for about 30 seconds before she said goodbye and I left.

So, how did it go?  I was disappointed in having zero orientation and zero guidance. In spite of that, I actually enjoyed spending some time with a segment of the population I'd never dealt with before. The good news about no guidance is that I guess I can do whatever I want.  The students that I dealt with obviously wanted to be there, and obviously wanted to learn. Next week, I'll go in armed with a few games that aren't quite as dumb, and I'll have some sample job application forms and sample immigration test questions. 

Classes were OK yesterday, but they'll get better from here on in.

Oh, and I never did fill out any paperwork.  I'm not sure if anybody knows who I am.

And speaking of weirdness

Here's an internet mind reading trick that had me baffled for a while. 

http://www.regiftable.com/regiftingrobinpopup.html

Have fun with it and try and figure it out.  And no, the solution doesn't lie in the chip that your dentist implanted in the last crown you had done, and no, the web cam on your computer isn't tracking your pupil movements.

If I remember, I'll reveal the solution next week.

Weird Plot Twists

I went and saw State of Play yesterday. It was a pretty good movie, with Russell Crowe playing the crusty aging newspaper reporter whose sidekick is played by Rachel Adams, a cute 20-something blogger on the internet edition of the same paper, both of whom come together while investigating seemingly unrelated crimes. The common thread of the crime is the involvement of Ben Affleck, a rising young congressman who was Crowe's character's roommate in college.  It is a well-made mystery thriller that held me engrossed and well-entertained until the final plot twist eluded me.  I left the theater with Megan (the daughter) and her friend Marian, and I was quite relieved to find out that they were both somewhat bewildered as well.  I thought for a while I'd totally lost the meaning of the story in a senior moment. So if you go see it, beware. Pay attention near the end, and if you get it, let me know.

Yesterday I finished reading Three Cups of Tea.  This is an amazing book about the adventures of Greg Mortenson, a mountain climber turned philanthropist who, since in 1994, and starting with absolutely nothing, has built dozens of schools in remote villages in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. I can heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a true story of adventure and passion.  And no, there are no weird plot twists to be found. 

Guns

No, not the kind that you get from working out.  The kind that kill people. Except for the occasional rumblings about the assault weapons ban, Obama and the Democrats have been noticeably silent about any form of gun control. The lunatic fringe thinks that Obama will ban all guns or tax ammunition like cigarettes (or they just hate that black socialist Obama) so they've been stocking up on guns and ammo ever since he got elected. So the gun issue will get worse before it gets better.

I came across some statistics the other day that are more than a bit shocking. Every year in the US, around 100,000 people are shot. Of those 100,000, about 70,000 don't die from their wounds, leaving about 30,000 who do. Of the 70,000 gunshot survivors, 48,000 were criminally attacked, 4,200 botched their own suicide, 15,000 were shot accidentally, and 1,000 were shot by police.  Of the 30,000 who died, about 17,000 are suicides, about 800 are shot accidentally, and about 300 are shot by police. That leaves 12,000 who are murdered with guns. (2/3 of all murders are committed with guns in the US) If you want to read more, check out The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

And here's an interesting tidbit for those who don't think that guns kill people (people kill people)... the American murder rate of 5.7/100,000 is more than three times the Canadian rate of 1.7/100,000. As noted above, about 2/3 of the murders in the US are committed with guns (roughly half the murders involved handguns.) About 1/3 of the murders in Canada are done with guns, and almost none with handguns. On the surface, it appears that if handgun availability were similar in the two countries, the murder rates would be similar. 

In the 7-1/2 years since 9/11 about 8,000 Americans have been killed in the "war on terror." It only takes eight months to kill the same number of Americans all by ourselves. 

David, the American Version

Miscellaneous Ramblings

I'm going to start playing racquetball again tomorrow.  I haven't played since bursitis struck a few weeks ago.  Even though my elbow has been slowly getting better, the process hasn't been any fun.  Three days after the initial diagnosis and draining of the bursa, a nasty infection set in, and I ended up at Urgent Care (Group Health's version of an emergency room) for IV antibiotics and some serious, i.e., Rush Limbaugh-style, painkillers. Last week, I went to see an orthopedic doctor who really wasn't much help.  He took some x-rays and told me I had some small bone chips floating around in the elbow, but there really wasn't a whole lot he could do to speed the healing. I asked him if it would be OK to play racquetball, and he essentially said that if it feels good, do it. For the last while, I've had full range of motion of the elbow, the swelling is mostly gone, and no pain unless I inadvertently bump the elbow. So I'm going smack the living bejeezus out of a ball and see how it feels. It's about time I get some exercise, I'm feeling and looking far fatter than I should.

Last Monday, I went for an interview, and Holy Cow!! I've actually got a job. Well, not a real job, but a volunteer position putting my newly-minted skills as an ESL teacher to a real-world test. For three hours a week, I'll help teach English to mostly Somali refugees. There are two levels of classes: a beginners class teaching the alphabet and other rudiments we take for granted, and a more advanced class of conversation and basic writing skills. Most of these people are illiterate even in their own language, so this will be an interesting challenge.  I've signed on for a two month hitch, and if the fit is good, I might take on another three hour class.  I'll keep you posted.

Farley is doing pretty well. When the weather's good, I've been taking him for daily bicycle runs.  Sometimes it seems to be working and I have some hope that he's starting to understand what it takes to be a "good dog." He doesn't always jump up on everybody, and sometimes we can actually pass other dogs on the street without him going bat-shit crazy.  Other times, I think it's hopeless and that the exercise regime he's on is only making him fitter and thereby increasing his supply of piss and vinegar. In any case, he's a fuzzy ball of love, and it's hard to get too angry with him for too long about his over-the-top exuberance.

You might be Canadian

Right Wing Weirdness

There's an undercurrent of real weirdness in the right wing, conservative, Republican opposition to Obama these days.  In some ways it's pretty funny, and great to see these whackjobs in total disarray, but in other ways there is a disconcerting malevolence to it all.

April 15th was tax day in the US, and also a day for TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties across the fruited plain. These things started out as a grassroots libertarian response to big government, but they soon became astro-turfed by Fox News and the right wing. The turnouts weren't huge, but they were very white and very angry. What they were angry at wasn't totally clear, but to my eye they looked like the bitter leftovers of a McCain-Palin rally. They hung tea bags from their hats and signs and talked of themselves as tea baggers out to tea bag anyone who disagreed with them. Are they really so clueless that they didn't know the street slang meaning of tea bagging? (If you don't know either, plug tea bagging into Google and see what the first entry is.)

Then you have elected Republican officials inflaming crowds with their rhetoric.  Last week, Rick Perry the governor of Texas, actually talked of federal oppression and that Texas had the right to secede from the union if it got bad enough.  Tom DeLay, former pest exterminator and Republican congressional whip, added fuel to the fire by saying that Texas might not have the right to secede, but it does have the right to break up into five states, thereby sending eight more presumably Republican senators to Washington. He mused that if they did that, the US would kick them out of the union, and Texas would get the secession they wanted. Is there something in the water in Texas? Maybe kool-aid?

The Republican senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, has told an anecdote several times about his reaction to the financial meltdown last fall. He called his wife on a Friday, and told her to go the ATM as often as she could and pull out as much cash as she could. Either he was trying to point out how human he was by getting panicked about the crisis, or he was trying to use his insider information to get his cash out of the bank before the coming bank run wiped everyone out. Either way, he's not very bright.

And how about Michelle Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota?  A month ago, she said she wants Minnesotans to be "armed and dangerous" in confronting the federal government. She later said she was speaking metaphorically, but her history of whackodom suggests otherwise.

If you watch Fox News at all (I can't stand it for more than a few minutes at a time), you'll see a lineup of the strangest, craziest, and maybe most dangerous people in the media.  Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are virtually calling for armed rebellion. Bill O'Reilly is just plain nuts.

And don't forget about Rush Limbaugh.  He's in a class by himself.

A lot of this would be funny if gun shops across the US hadn't seen huge increases in sales since the election. Even supposedly liberal Seattle has seen a 30% increase over last year.  And last week I heard a report on NPR about a nationwide shortage of ammunition.

Maybe, in the words of Fred Eaglesmith, it's time to get a gun.

The recession hits close to home

Caroline was very upset when she came over for dinner a couple of nights ago. She had just come from a staff meeting at her Issaquah district school that outlined the procedures for the coming lay-off of teachers in view of Washington State's huge budget deficit. She is in her fourth year of teaching social studies to ninth graders.

There are around 1200 teachers in the district, and the RIF (Reduction In Force) line will be set somewhere between 800 and 900.  That means that if the RIF line is set at 900, all teachers with a number higher than 900 will be laid off. That's a reduction in force of 25% in a school district where enrollment is rising! The staff was informed that those teachers with numbers higher than the RIF line will have to vacate their classrooms on the last day of school, remove all their stuff, and turn in their keys and computers. The district realizes that unless class sizes become astronomical, they can't layoff 25-35% of the teachers, and that some will be hired back.  But that will only happen after the final budgets are set and all the teachers who are leaving due to normal attrition are identified.  Then some portion of the laid-off teachers can apply to get their old jobs back.  But they will get back jobs without their COLA raises, no raise in pay grade for National Board Certification (I'm not sure if I have the name right, but Caroline just went through the laborious process to get hers), and much larger classes (without the increase in pay for teaching classes of more than 30 students).

Washington has a reputation as a very liberal state, and therefore spends lots of money on K-12 education, right?  If that is your opinion, you would be not just wrong, but dead wrong. While I would be the last to argue a linear relation between school funding and student achievement, there is a link. In 2006 (the latest numbers I could easily find), the average per student spending in the US is $9,138. The highest is New York, at $14,884, the lowest is Utah  at $5,437. (I think Utah must be an outlier with a lot of home-schooling or Mormon church financed education or something) In any case, Washington spends $7,830 per student.  That's right in line with Alabama at $7,646 and Mississippi at $7,221!

Caroline has a seniority number of 892, so there's a very good chance that she will be cut in the initial round. She's an exceptional teacher (PTA Teacher of the Year last year) who works hard, has the gift, and loves her job. She's confident that she'll have a job next year, but the disillusionment is setting in. 

She is beginning to understand why so many good teachers get burned out and leave the profession.

An Alternative Universe

I call this blog A Walternative Universe, a somewhat juvenile but nonetheless useful name for the lifestyle in which I find myself.

If you want to read about a truly alternative universe, read the torture memos that the Justice Department released yesterday.  They can be found in their entirety at the ACLU website. I've only read part of the last one, dated May 30, 2005. Note that this memo was written almost four years after the horror of 911, long after the "best before date" of any arguments of the "ticking time bomb" or of a panic-stricken reaction.  It is chilling.  In quite readable legalese, various torture techniques are described, and then arguments are made about why the techniques aren't really torture as defined in various statutes and treaties. In dry, clinical prose they describe:

-the facial slap

-the abdominal slap

-the attention grasp

-walling

-wall standing

-sleep deprivation 

-water dousing

-the waterboard

In bureaucratic detail, acceptable water temperatures and room temperatures are defined, repetition and frequency of use of a particular technique are set out, making the whole horrible mess seem like a clinical procedure. Sleep deprivation is limited to 11 days, but in practice rarely exceeded 96 hours. How benevolent! During sleep deprivation, the subject is forced to stand with his arms shackled to a point above his head. The position of the hands is somewhere between the waist and above the head, but can't be above the head for more than two hours at a time. Of course, nature calls, so rather than giving the torturee a bathroom break once in a while, they are forced to wear adult diapers. Of course, torturers are cautioned to change the diaper regularly and monitor the subject for skin rashes.

The waterboard can be used no more than 5 times in 30 days, and no more than twice in 24 hours. Each session can last no more than 2 hours. No more than six applications of water can be applied in any one session. 

This is all truly bizarre. This is something out of a horror movie. And Obama has decided that the people who actually did this will not be prosecuted because they were acting in "good faith."  Didn't that argument and the argument of "following orders" go out the door at Nuremburg? Obama has left open the possibility of prosecuting higher-ups, but he doesn't seem to have the stomach for it. I hope that at least he doesn't obstruct the efforts of those in Congress who want to investigate this horrid affair.  At some point, as more and more information surfaces, I think that prosecution of those responsible will become inevitable. We can only hope.

British American Idol

I've never watched American Idol, but I have seen a few clips from the British version.  Check out this video.  I guarantee you'll find the seven minutes and seven seconds very well spent. (For some reason, embedding was disabled so you'll have to click on the link.)

Tuscon, etc.

Last month in the depths of Seattle's winter (even though spring was supposed to be breaking out), in order to avoid an outbreak of the dreaded SAD (Seasonal Affect Disorder) Megan and I decided that we had to go somewhere to get some sun and warmth. Tuscon over the Easter weekend was our choice.

Even though Friday was cold and rainy and blustery, we did manage to do a bunch of touristy things, and even got to spend some quality time poolside on Saturday.  On Friday we drove down to the Amerind Museum to see a very good collection of Indian art and artifacts.  And while we were that close, we went to see the Mystery Thing a few miles away.  The Thing is that it's still a mystery, just a collection of the weirdest odds and ends ever assembled under one roof.  It was well worth the $1 admission cost!

On Saturday we went to Biosphere 2.  On previous trips to Arizona, I had driven by the place, but had never gone in to take a look. Biosphere 2 was a fascinating experiment in trying to build a self-sufficient bubble in which eight people could live indefinitely.  They called off the experiment after two full years, but I think it was amazing that it lasted that long.  They grew their own food (they were all pretty skinny after two years of a 1200 calorie per day strictly vegan diet) and even made their own air. As for the personal interactions after two years in a bubble, I think it is very telling that one of the books written by one of the participants is subtitled Two Years and Twenty Minutes.  

On Easter Sunday, we even went to Mass at the St. Xavier Mission south of Tucson.  It's been called the Sistine Chapel of North America, but I think that's at least a bit of an exaggeration.

On Sunday evening, having had enough of the poolside sun, we ventured to Mt. Lemmon to one of the observatories there, and had a fabulous (though cold) evening looking at stars, nebulae, and an amazing view of Saturn's moons and rings.

The rental car we ended up with was a Prius, and I gotta say it was pretty cool.  After some diddling and figuring out how to get the thing started, the car served us very well, and averaged over 45mpg for the time we had it.  We also used Hertz' Neverlost GPS navigation system.  It wasn't very user friendly, and I had to use one of my USB memory sticks to save destinations, but the voice of Halley (the female version of Hal, from 2001 A Space Odyssey) always got us to where we wanted to go.

I've got a few more pictures to post and a few more tales to tell, but this revised Blogger template is really annoying me, so I'll stop for now.

Obama, so far

I'm beginning to have some serious doubts about Obama's handling of the financial mess so far. His latest plan to take care of the toxic asset problem seems like a classic case of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. He's offered to lend money to large financial institutions and hedge funds to buy the troubled "legacy" assets of the banks with very little of their own money. They can put up as little as 6% of the total cost and borrow the rest from the Treasury. They are only risking the 6%, but have a huge upside potential if the assets turn out to be not as bad as expected. Not only is the risk/reward ratio out of whack, it looks like banks will be able to game the system to have guaranteed profits. The MSM hasn't really had a lot to say about all this, but some negative commentary by very respected economists is easy to find.  Look here, and here, if you're interested. 

I think the fundamental problem is that Wall Street owns the Treasury department, and has for the last 20+ years. Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and Hank Paulson, all former Treasury secretaries are also former Goldman Sachs CEOS's. Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke were at the helm at the Fed as all of this was unraveling a year ago. It's easy to think of it all as a giant conspiracy that would make Tony Soprano blush. 

If you have a half hour to kill, watch this video from Bill Moyers Journal. It's pretty scary.

Another point where Obama is falling down is the pursuit of justice for the war criminals in the Bush administration.  The Red Cross report on Guantanamo detainees has been leaked and some Justice department torture memos have been released.  I'm not sure what else he needs to let the prosecutors loose.  While paying lip service to prosecuting criminality, he says he wants to look forward and not back.  Imagine if that philosophy were applied to crime in general.  Isn't all crime committed in the past? Maybe he's slow-playing his cards, and the lord knows he's got enough on his plate, but the right wing is already rabid in their hatred of him, so I don't see what he's got to lose. 

And what's he doing in Afghanistan?  That truly will be his Vietnam if he continues on the course he's apparently chosen.

I'm still a fan of Obama, and he was by far the best choice for President, but I'm still waiting for some change I can believe in.

A Couple of Videos

Countdown with Keith Olbermann, is one of my favorite talking head shows. Olbermann is smart, irreverent, often very funny. In this video tribute to his mother, he is all of the above, and very moving as well.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And then there's this one. In many ways, it's really sappy, and I'm not a huge Julie Andrew's fan, but I found it oddly moving nonetheless.



Enjoy!

TESL Seminar

On Sunday, Megan (the Elder) and I finished a six-day course for Teaching English as a Second Language. The course was put on by Oxford Seminars, a company that appears to be a leader in providing TESL training. The class was given over three weekends, 9-6 on Saturdays and Sundays. Before the class started, even though the daughter of a friend had taught English in China with no academic credentials other than an Oxford diploma, I was somewhat concerned that Oxford was just a diploma mill. As I discovered, there's a bit of truth to that, but it was a very good course nonetheless.

As it turned out, Karen was great; a professional instructor with lots of international experience. There were about a dozen people in the class, ranging from unmotivated kids who dropped out of college, to fresh college graduates looking for adventure, to people with masters degrees looking for a career change, to me and Megan. It was a good intensive class, that touched on lots of teaching techniques and learning styles. It was well worth the money, even though a couple of shit-birds in class got diplomas in spite of sleeping through classes when they bothered to show up at all. I think that in the final analysis, the diploma is only one arrow in the quiver. If you want a job teaching ESL, you'll have to sell yourself and have more than just an Oxford diploma on your resume. I can't imagine either of those two guys managing to get a job of any kind anywhere.

And I guess some things never change. Even after all these years, I'm still a bit of a suck-up as a student and a sucker for a teacher's attention. Karen really liked me and called on me a lot. I would have gladly cleaned the blackboard erasers after school for her! I was especially pleased when she graded the practice lesson I taught, praised me lavishly, and marked mine as being the best in the class! My chest was puffed out until I saw Megan's evaluation. She too was at the top of the class!

Oh well. Sucked in again.