According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, fracturing fluids typically contain about 90 percent water, about 9 percent propping agents like silica sand and less than 0.5 percent chemicals.

International Business Times, August 11 2011

*thunk*

When experts spew out statements like this, hiding absolute numbers behind safe-sounding percentages, when they deliberately obfuscate the word "chemicals" to make a political point, and when "journalists" cannot be bothered to research what the "less than 0.5 percent chemicals" contains, my heart trembles for any hope of an enlightened citizenry.

But all that sounds like fearful piffling on my part, and even responding to it makes me sound like a liberal loser wonky type.

Heck, air is mostly nitrogen, with a small chunk of oxygen tossed in. I wonder if the committee that spewed this nonsense would mind sitting in a room with only 0.5% carbon monoxide during one of its meetings.

No, that was not a threat. Allowing fracking near someone's water supply, however, is a threat.
We're letting them frack with our water--what would Thomas Jefferson do?

Cartoon lifted without permission from here.

READ MORE - Fracking logic

If you want to see, you need to sit still. Still enough, for long enough, to be part of what is.
Be still and know.

You will know what it means when you get there--but first you have to sit. Still.

This is my Auntie Beth's pond, not mine.

***

I've gotten pretty good at sitting still on these cataract days, so humid even thoughts have a hazy edge.  A functioning republic needs a reflective citizenry--I sit by the edge of my pond and nap reflect, doing my patriotic duty.

If most of us knew what we wanted, and thought hard about how to get there, about what matters, and then pursued those things in ways that do not harm ourselves or our families, our republic could work.

Most of us don't anymore, most of us don't have the time, and the time we do have we pre-empt to the thoughts of others--Fox news, Cialis ads, NFL, Nascar--we've become the natterin' nabobs of negativism Agnew feared decades ago. (Full disclosure: I love Nascar and the NFL.)

It shows in public discourse, but even sadder, it shows in our private lives as well.

***

I am going to the SOS March for a few grand, and many selfish, reasons.

I will be chatting, laughing, drinking, maybe even dancing with generally happy folks who live the lives they believe worth living. Folks who still make bread, can, knit, brew, and write. Folks who give a damn, and who know enough history to know that giving a damn is how you fix things.

Folks who know their craft, and the history of their craft, well enough to know this march matters.

I am trading bottles of mead with Tom Hoffman, I am going to share words with Jose Vilson, I am going to shake hands with Diane Ravitch. Linda Darling-Hammond will be there, so will Jonathan Kozol. Heck, even Matt Damon (of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back fame)  is coming!

When I go back to school in September, and someone bemoans NCLB, I will share my stories from the march, so that they will join us.

My Dad marched in DC back in 1963 in his full dress US Marine Corp officer's uniform. (Yeah, he's that guy...) He was proud of being the first in his clan to be born in America, and he was proud to be a Marine. He got to fly because the USMC didn't care where he came from, only what he could do. He lived the American dream.

I have a copy of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence up in my classroom. I teach science, true, but my primary responsibility is to create citizens. Not scientists. Not suits. Citizens.

I work in one of the few public spaces left in our country, one of the few places left where ideals of our republic are discussed earnestly.

When the discussions end, so does our republic.

We are marching "to reclaim schools as places of learning, joy, and democracy." Joy is a wonderful word, right up there with Jefferson's pursuit of happiness. Joy matters in a democracy, because we matter as people, as families, as communities.

Hey, it's going to be fun! And educational!

READ MORE - Why I'm marching next week. Hope you join us!

"...[A]t the length truth will out."

I love the Fourth of July. Today we feasted on the first local tomatoes, a completely different beast than the imposters sitting on your grocery shelves. I ate a peach that grew less than two miles from here, its impossibly sweet juice leaving a puddle at my feet. The basil grows like weeds in July. In July, the grasshopper makes more sense than the ant.

America is a great place to be if you have a patch of land and love to eat. Jefferson said each of us should have a patch of land if democracy was to flourish. That we mostly don't and that democracy mostly doesn't is no accident.

This American experiment has withstood greedy yahoos in the past, and if we keep our wits about us, will withstand the current nonsense the people in suits.

America never was about the people in suits. The powerful know this, but hoi polloi occasionally forget, which is how we get into messes like the current nonsense with NCLB, a child of doublespeak and magical thinking.

***

Science tolerates neither.

When a child learns how to rationally, how to discern what's real from what's not, and even more important, learns to treasure truth, demagoguery dies.

Teaching matters for a lot of reasons. Preserving the thin thread of democracy in its agonal breaths here in a land bought and paid for by Arne and Eli and Bill matters.

History matters. Science matters. Art matters. Language matters. Vocational arts matter. (Really, Arne, when was the last time you fixed anything?)

For all the labels that divide us, promoted by a class that feeds our divisions to enhance their power, we're most of us are still united by our belief in the land and our Constitution.

Crispus Attucks gave up his life in 1770--read his history. This country was not founded by the suits. The land belongs to us.

Yes, I know that's George, not Tom.... 
Pictures by Leslie. North Cape May rocks. Go us.

READ MORE - Independence Day

At the start of the school year, back when the sunlight was fading and squirrels were fattening up, each student picked a tree to watch. Call it phenology, call it botany, call it whatever you want, but it's really just observing, and few of us do that well. I call it the Perennial Project.


Some wise people back in the 1890's decided that biology should be the first course of science for high school students because biology was, back in the day, all about observing and categorizing living things. If you care to study the world, you need to learn how to look.

[T]he elements of biology serve specially well as a means to cultivate the power of accurate observation (i.e., the exercise of perception regulated and clarified through direct subordination to reflection)...work specially adapted to exercise of judgment.

Report of the Committee of Fifteen, p. 161

That biology is now taught as something else does not deny the wisdom of the Committee of Fifteen.   Learning how to look is particularly relevant in a culture that encourages others to do your observations for you. Judgment without observation may be good for a consumer economy, but has predictably disastrous results for a functioning democracy. (I said functioning....)

***

Kids occasionally need to be led by the nose, and asking them to spend a few minutes outside each week staring at a tree does require some external motivation, as prickly as that has become in the ultra-chic eduworld. I toggled the grades in a way that doing the observations helped a bit, but screwing up did not sink them.

Kids need room to screw up, lots of room, especially when asked to stand outside staring at a stupid tree making this stupid drawing for this stupid class. Most students trust me, as they trust most teachers, despite a steady stream of evidence that the trust may be misplaced; I take advantage of this.

This will go somewhere, I tell them. I promise.

Then winter comes, and the trees, mildly interesting to some in autumn, "die." Now the stupid teacher wants me to stand in the stupid cold to draw a stupid picture of a stupid dead tree.

A lot of them fake it. They do not know that I know, but (for the most part), I let it go. They put their drawings in a folder, and come mid-January, I stop asking for reports.


Early March, I started it up again. Find a bud on your tree, measure it, draw it.

They resist.What's a bud? I can't find one my tree doesn't have buds I can't reach it I have to catch a bus I have to babysit my little brother my tree is dead nothing is happening this is stupid it rained all week my tree is dead it's too small to measure I don't have a ruler....and I push back, a little. 

A small change--a bud gets a little bigger, a little tighter. Kids are inherently curious. They start to watch.

Then it happens--someone's bud blooms, and a child is astounded to see a flower from a tree, astounded enough to share it with the class. Then another child's tree blooms, then another. And they talk.

I'm not going to pretend that all of the children get excited, nor that more than a few continue to fake it (and I continue to pretend I don't know this), collecting a paltry 9 or 10 points each week.

Here's the unexpected part (for me): a few of the children are now writing voluminous reports, wonderfully descriptive logs with multiple drawings, because they want to, reminiscent of the meandering mind of Thoreau when he describes a particular plant:

I observe the peculiar steel bluish purple of the night shade i.e. the tips of the twigs while all beneath is green dotted with bright berries over the water.

from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau

This is how kids write when free from the 5 paragraph essay, from the fear of my grade book.

This is how kids write when they take a moment, a long moment, to observe something that interests them. The words matter, and they struggle to find the words, because the observation matters more.

***

 
We have a new superintendent here in Bloomfield, Jason Bing, who officially started less than 10 days ago. He's my 4th superintendent in the less than 5 years I've taught here. I expect good things from him, as he does from us, that's what professionals do.

I have a concern, though, and it's not about him, it's about his contract. According to the local news, and it's all I have to go by at the moment, he can earn up to 15% more (over $25,000) "if the district meets five state testing benchmarks set by the BOE."

State testing will not measure, cannot measure, the effects of my Perennial Project. Indeed, the flowery Thoreauesque descriptions interjected with pieces of a child's humanity could hurt a student on the writing portion of our state exams.

The superintendent has been "incentivized"(Arne's word) to push up scores. Scores matter, for some very good reasons, but some things not (yet) measured by the tests matter more.

Much more.

I would love to post some of the students' work here--I'll see if I can get permission.

READ MORE - Perennial projects

"The only reason to oppose these bills is if you believe the status quo is acceptable."

Governor Christie, announcing proposed legislation for teacher evaluation

Parse that sentence. Tell me if it makes sense.

Maybe he got misquoted--these things happen. But if he did not, he's playing a dangerous game.

Other possibilities I considered and dismissed, maybe too quickly:

• He believes what he says, and is incapable of seeing any point of view bar his own.
• He's not quite as bright as your average U.S. Attorney.
• He's a huge fan of Animal Farm.
• He does not have a great grasp of stats, and cannot see the problems with using the testing as data for evals--to be fair, a lot of folks have trouble with stats, but he's got people who can brief him, if he cares to listen.

Dr. Baker says it so much better here:

"Let’s make this really simple - IT’S PLAINLY ILLOGICAL TO BLAME SUCCESS OR FAILURE ON A FACTOR THAT DOESN’T VARY ACROSS SUCCESSFUL AND FAILING SCHOOLS. That’s just middle school science logic. Perhaps we should fire the middle school science teachers who taught the current crop of ed reformers?"

 Does put a new spin on the bully pulpit.
Pic is file photo from same article linked above.

READ MORE - "Four legs good, two legs bad!"

Before I don my asbestos underwear and jump into the fire, understand that anyone paying attention can see some ominous trends once you peek behind the curtain. Mountains of assets are being sucked up by the unfathomably wealthy, too few Americans grasp the role of government, and we're in real danger of succumbing to a plutocracy.

Given the true wealth of the United States--our water, our minerals, our trees, our climate, and our Constitution--we can turn things around. And we will. What's happening in Madison, though, is a symptom, not the cure.

How many folks in your town have ever been to a town council meeting? A board of education hearing? Or (yawn, who has time) a session of the zoning board? How many in your town vote in the Presidential election, but fail to vote in the mayoral one?

Democracy is noisy and messy and frightfully ineffective at times--the protests in Madison got that part down--but it also depends on process and work and citizenship.



On rallies:
Getting stoked at a rally can be exhilarating and can send a powerful message. Our Bill of Rights "guarantee" our right to assembly (though the recent expansion of Free Speech Zones makes a mockery of this). Voting is far less exciting, but if everyone with stake in it took the time to vote in their community's best interests, Wisconsin would not be in this mess. (No, it's not like Egypt, folks--you really need to do a little more probing....)

Keep the rally going! Keep fighting the good fight! Then, however it all turns out, continue to flex your fledgling wings at your town halls, in your local coffee shops, in your local papers.



On fleeing legislators: 
Legislators scurrying out of state makes for entertaining news, and there may be merit in buying time for a vote as historic as the one about to take place, but it's only temporary, and again reflects a symptom, not a cure. With government comes duty. A democratic republic can really suck at times, but so long as the people participate knowledgeably, it beats any other form of rule hands down.



On sickouts:
A functioning republic depends on an educated citizenry. Teachers matter because education matters. Closing schools through a job action to protest even a bill as vile as the one proposed sends a very mixed message. I understand the anger. I'm earning making less this year than I did last year, and it may get worse next year. Still, I owe it to my students, to their parents, and to my town to deliver what I promised I would deliver.

No doubt some teachers believe that their actions serve a greater purpose in the long run, and no doubt many are willingly giving up their pay for the days missed. Still, what we do matters, every single day. We have a public duty. Closing schools rarely helps our cause.



On unions:
Unions matter, more than most of us not involved in the plutonomy realize. They only matter, though, if they act as unions, for the general good of everyone in the union.

The past few years we have seen unions create two-tiered memberships. Here in Jersey, our local teacher unions, in conjunction with school boards,  have created some pay scales that result in the top earning more than twice as much as the bottom, for essentially performing the same work. Until unions start acting as true unions, protecting every member's interests, their status will continue to fall.


The events in Wisconsin may mark the beginning of public awareness, a fresh look at the marvelous possibilities we have in a land filled with grace, but only if we start to do the work that needs to be done.

If you're going to abandon, even temporarily, your duties as a legislator or as a teacher, to take on greater duties as a citizen, you had better be willing to work hard, very hard, to make this American experiment work.

Otherwise you're part of the problem.

Asbestos fire suit photo originally from Life.

READ MORE - Thoughts on Wisconsin, labor unions, and democracy

In that land the great experiment was to be made, by civilized man, of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis; and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1821

What is my role as a teacher?

Let's lay it on the table:

I don't give a rodent's orifice what your child grows up "to be"--I got her in front of me every day now, a human being, one who lives now, a good lesson to be learned by all of us.

I would like her to be happy, of course, but that's not my charge. I am charged with helping your child learn how to think in a Peter Pan culture. A functioning republic depends on it.

I don't give a rodent's orifice what your child's potential earnings will be, beyond her ability to reasonably clothe, feed, and house her clan.

Bigger forces than public education are conspiring against her. Just look at the distribution of wealth the past decade or two. I am charged with helping her understand the myriad ways science and technology affect her, and her children, and her children's children.

I don't give a rodent's orifice what her test scores are beyond getting her through graduation requirements.

I do care about what she understands, and how she gets there. If she runs off with John Travolta and I see her expounding on the benefits of Scientology on the local news, well, I failed. I suspect even a decent score on her SATs won't make her less immune to that kind of nonsense.

I don't give a rodent's orifice what your or your daughter's politics are.

I do care that she can sort out various sources of information, critically analyze data, and make reasoned conclusions based on thinking. She should save exercising her amygdala for NFL football and such.

I don't give a rodent's orifice about how your child tests against a child in China or Singapore or Great Britain or The Antilles.

I do hope she can find China on a map, that she grasps enough economics to make reasonable choices when she shops, and that she has a sense of how large (or small) Earth is.

I am an American public school teacher. We are teetering on the edge of failure of the greatest social experiment known to Western culture. We sit on fabulously fertile ground, in a moderate climate, with plenty of water and sunshine, and we judge wealth by how much we earn in cash.

I have no problem if your child should grow up to be a ridiculously rich derivatives trader on Wall Street, so long as she does so deliberately, and so long as she continues to support this American experiment.

I also have no problem if she grows up to be a park ranger, a casino dealer, a greeter, a plumber, a salesperson, or anything else that lets her live her life, contribute to our community, even pursue happiness.

Oh, and maybe remember the equation for photosynthesis along the way....

READ MORE - An American rant

This year New Jersey requires incoming freshman to pass an end of course biology exam before receiving a diploma. In theory, this is a wonderful idea. As an added bonus, it protects my position.

The state has decided that competency in biology matters more than cooking, than music, than art, than shop. It matters more than learning a second language, more than theater, more than auto maintenance or civics.

This made sense back in the 19th century, when a family could be trusted to teach children how to get along in the world. How to slaughter chickens, how to grow grain, how to shod a horse or darn a sock.

This made sense back in the 20th century when a family could be trusted to teach children how to change a tire, replace a faucet, find the faulty tube in the television, sew a hem, or scramble eggs for breakfast.




For many of my students, maybe most, holding them to a minimum standard of competency in biology is no big deal. It is possible to pass a biology course without grasping much, and you do not need to be an Einstein a Pasteur to meet the state standards.

Still, when we live in a time when many children would go hungry even if given a sack of fresh flour and a cup of yeast, we need to think carefully how we want children to spend their time in compulsory and public education.

***

Yes, families have an obligation to teach their children.
Yes, more children are in cities now than on farms.
Yes, an educated citizenry is vital for sustaining certain industries.

No, you do not need a college education to be useful, nor does higher education guarantee better government. We need literacy, we need numeracy, we need a sense of place, and we need a sense of time. Instead, this is the proclaimed aim:

A high school should be a place where all students are prepared with the knowledge and skills necessary to enter postsecondary education and pursue meaningful careers.

Arne Duncan, Teacher in Chief

The neo-tech priests (bless me, Father Gates, for I have sinned....) confound capitalism with democracy, and colleges with competency. Our teaching/business/technology classes have been served well by higher education.

That it is possible to be charged with educating generation after generation of children without ever having set foot outside a classroom, without ever working a factory line, without ever picking up a shovel or a wrench or a clam rake, without ever having earned a living beyond the classroom walls has skewed our view of what education means.

No, you do not need to be a stevedore before you teach in public education, but it doesn't hurt.

What does hurt, though, is a generation of education specialists who literally grew up in classrooms, earning praise and grades for pursuing specialized knowledge chunked into particular subjects divvied up back in the 1890s.

How about this, Mr. Duncan?

A high school should be a place where all students are prepared with the knowledge and skills necessary to pursue meaningful lives as citizens of Bloomfield, New Jersey, and the United States.

I've worked on the docks, in hospitals, in barges and on boats, in a retail store, in shelters, and in a bottling factory. Now I work in a school building.

The scary part?

Just about everyone I've ever worked with outside of a school building had little positive to say about schooling, beyond the social aspects. A few did say they they wished they had stayed in school longer, doomed as they are now in a troubled economy, but an advanced education is not the panacea for employment that the policymakers believe (or say, anyway).

Highly educated is not synonymous with well educated. Just about anybody I know outside of education gets this. Many in education get this, too, but not enough of us, not nearly enough.

Yep, the inimitable (but emminently copyable) toothpaste for dinner

READ MORE - "Meaningful careers" or meaningful lives, Arne?

I have an unhealthy (and perhaps unnatural) dislike of oligarchs.

Bill Gates plans to leave $10,000,000 to each of his children because he "doesn’t want to leave them the burden of tremendous wealth."

Read that again. S-L-O-W-L-Y....

Mr. Gates the Third knows nothing about my town, my children, our state, about horseshoe crabs, or about life, judging by the (limited) evidence.

So here's a fair question: what does Mr. Gates the Third believe in? What matters to him? I wouldn't give a rat's ass about these questions if Mr. Gates the Third left my children (and yours) alone.

But he won't. Neither will Eli Broad nor Arne Duncan nor Warren Buffet. So I want to know what they believe. Do they believe in God or an afterlife? Do they believe in the commons? Do they garden or brew or bake, or do they have "their people" do it for them?

People who screw with public education better have good reasons. Our local schools are the last grasp of the public commons that we have; the top 10% of Americans now control over 70% of the wealth; the bottom 50% control 2.5%. The top 1% have more than 13 times what half the nation holds.




Here's an idea--let those of us in the bottom 80% figure out what our children need, those born without "the Third" appended to their names. Those who fight the wars. Those who fill town halls and local bars and public parks. Those whose backs support the dreams of the Bills and Melinda and Warrens in our midst.

The most depressing thing about reading about Mr. Gates the Third?
Will Nelson, our Willie Nelson, played at their wedding.

The graph is from True/Slant.....

The "Bill Gates Hates Children" poster was lifted from Rudd-O,
which grants a GNU GPL license ....

READ MORE - Bill Gates the Third: Póg mo Thóin

Young children, 2 to 5 years old, spend over 3 1/2 hours a day
in front of televisions.

Preschool children need about 12 hours of sleep a day, so figure a healthy child has about 12 hours a day to earn about ants, water, people, and play.

30% of their awake time is spent in front of a television. Throw in the other video devices (DVRs, DVDs, game consoles, etc.) and you're edging up to 40%.

This, of course, is obscene.

But I watch with my child....
Yep, I don't doubt it--why not try watching your child, instead.

But it's educational....
Yep, if you want to make a babbling empty box out of him, an empty box that will swallow dogma and buy lots of shoes.

But I need my free time....
Yep, and you'll get it when the kids hit school, which seems to be the major reason for public school in many parents' eyes.

But it's PBS....
Yep, drop the "P" and you're closer to the truth.

But it quiets down my noisy toddler....
Yep, another drowned voice keeps her safe from that democratic lifestyle.

But it's a dangerous world outside.
Yep, but far less dangerous than the sheltered world we've made for our children. Diabetes will kill your child long before the bogeyman has a chance.

Turn it off.

Photo by Leslie, taken last evening on the Delaware Bay.
Some large mammals with big teeth were nearby, but we survived anyway.
Family around TV via cerritos.edu, listed as public domain.

Source of television stats: NielsonWire. That and some basic arithmetic.

READ MORE - Throw away your television

"Through this plan we are setting an ambitious goal: All students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career – no matter who you are or where you come from."

President Obama, March 13, 2010

Mr. President, can we cut through the crap?

I'm a retired pediatrician. A lot of children are damaged--some by bad luck, many by bad choices made by others.

Yes, the photo is unsettling, yes, too many children have been lost because we did not acknowledge their potential, but your rhetoric is fanning a dangerous fire.

I teach healthy children, and I teach damaged children. I teach wealthy children, and I teach poor children. I teach children with fancy orthodontia, and children with rotting teeth.

I teach America, Mr. President. If you cannot see America from your perch in D.C., please spend a weekend back home in Chicago and remember the man you once were, or pretended to be.

Come to Bloomfield--our motto here is "Learn to live." Some of us have careers, some of us have jobs. Some of us went to college, some of us were apprenticed. Most of us are happy, even the good chunk of us who have neither careers nor degrees.

Focus on getting the jobs back, and towns like Bloomfield will fill them well. We send soldiers to war--our street signs carry the names of those killed and missing in action. We have young folks overseas now. We helped process uranium during World War II, and have the contaminated useless land to show for it.

Learn to live. Not learn to earn, not learn to serve Microsoft, but simply learn to live. Most of my students will leave BHS with decent academic skills and decent decency skills.

All the degrees in the world won't fix the plumbing. All the degrees in the world will not land a job that's now in Asia. All the degrees in the world will not make you a better citizen, friend, or lover.

Learn to live, Mr. President, and let us go about our business doing the same. And if you need the name of a decent carpenter, a decent bakery, a decent school, give me a call. We got them right here in Bloomfield, the America outside the Beltway.

The disturbing photo from Temple University is real, and it's human.
The classroom photo is from Bloomfield, 1914, found here, shared at the Bloomfield Historical site by David Petillo.

READ MORE - We "Learn to live," Mr. President

I just read a fun post tweeted by dtitle, "Five amazing inventions that will doom us all!"

Why wait for the future, though? We already have all kinds of technological doo-dads that have doomed humanity (if not humans):

(Runners-up: Automobiles, telephones, and the incandescent lamp. And record players (recommended by John Spencer).)


Number Five: Television (and other forms of e-media)

Very few folks control television, and very few appreciate how this medium has altered our minds. Democracy depends on discourse, and folks who spend hours a day "consuming" visions produced by very wealthy people with very narrow objectives effectively remove themselves as true citizens (though they can, alas, still vote).

Democracy is essentially dead in the States, and hasn't flourished in most parts of the world anyway, so as influential as televison is, I relegated it to fifth place here.




Number Four: The Haber Process

Prometheus gave us fire, Fritz Haber gave us nitrogen fixation. We were now one with the gods.

Before the Haber process, only bacteria and bolts of lightning made nitrogen available for life. Without nitrogen, we have no proteins, no nucleic acids. Haber gave humans control of the nitrogen cycle. We are gods now, able to make ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen.

We no longer had to rely on poop for fertilizer. Our huge human population depends on fertilizer made possible by the Haber process. Ammonia can also be used to make lots of explosives.

Why is this on the list (aside from my innnate hatred of golf courses)? Haber's process created industrialized agriculture. We disconnected ourselves from the mystery (or so we think), and now believe we can continue to grow food relentlessly, without thought.

Haber helped trigger the Green Revolution. In the end, it will only mean that many more carcasses to burn when our fossil fuels are depleted, and artificial fertilizers become too expensive for all but the elite.

Fritz Haber also developed chlorine gas for use in warfare, and personally oversaw its use in France.




Number Three: The written word

Yep, I use them. I read, I write, I even (*gasp*) blog. I'm a hypocrite.

Words are abstract. They freeze moments. Our collective oral memory evolves through generations, tailoring the needs of the clan with the needs of the community. The written word changes all this.

NONE of any of the rest of this list happens with oral tradition alone. The written Bible does not happen, nor the written Koran. Old conflicts dissolve with time in the oral tradition. The written word keeps grudges alive forever.

In my best moments, words disappear.

I'm OK with burning books, as long as we burn all of them.




Number Two: Computers

We can now process thought faster than we can think. Every one of you reading this post can be traced. Databases record your keystrokes. There is no longer privacy for anyone committed to living the 21st century life.

I'd like to pick my nose and maybe even savor the results without anyone knowing. (That was allegorical, folks.)

Computers allow telecommunications, allow nuclear weaponry, allow large hadron colliders, allow genomic typing, allow pretty much every foray into risky high tech hi-jinks without an iota of thought.

OK, they allow Zelda, too, so it's almost a wash.





And number one:
Nuclear weapons

We got 'em, lots of them. So does Russia, and China. The Brits. The cozy buddies India and Pakistan. Did I mention France? France!?

Well that's OK, no rogues states, eh. (Ooops...almost forgot. NORTH KOREA!)

Maybe Israel. And soon, perhaps, Iran.

But it's OK, we all love each other, and would never use them, right?







Yoshihiro, the baby died 11 days later.
Tanaka Kio, the mother, lived until December 9, 2006.

Their story, our story, is here.

Television pic from https://ishcmcwiki.wikispaces.com, via CC 3.0
Fritz is from wikipedia
The open Bible is from wikipedia, too
Univac via Georgia Gwinnett College
Yoshihiro and Tanaka's photo was taken by Yamahata Yosuke.

Am I serious about this list?
Yes.

I'd love to hear your opinions....

READ MORE - Five inventions that have doomed humanity

In 29 fell swoops, Westley Strellis advanced education in Atlanta today.


He took out 29 televisions at an Atlanta Walmart using an Easton baseball bat he borrowed from the sporting goods section.

Eight days before the Braves open training camp in the Grapefruit League, Mr. Strellis struck a blow for small businesses, for education, and, by golly, for baseball.


The "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" ought to be mandatory reading for anyone contemplating teaching. The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn Toward the Local ought to be mandatory reading for anyone interested in maintaining our republic. Both were written by Jerry Mander, once a Madison Avenue guy, and a hero of mine.

I know, I know, I shouldn't encourage this kind of nonsense. And maybe those Boston dudes should not have tossed the tea overboard.

The police report was lifted from The Smoking Gun

READ MORE - Jerry Mander would be proud

Vision: A quality science education fosters a population that...applies scientific knowledge and skills to increase economic productivity.

2009 NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards

I am a science teacher, and occasionally a good one. I am certified by the state of New Jersey (Liberty and Prosperity), and paid by the Township of Bloomfield, which was bought from the Yancetaw Indians. Our first public school opened in 1758.

This makes me a government agent.

Prosperity (from our state motto) keeps getting confused with economic productivity, which smells like part of the Business Roundtable's undemocratic take-over of a public institution.

***

Tonight I made a butter run (salted, of course) to the local A&P; I said hello to Michael, now a man whom I've known since he wore diapers, while he lassoed some carts, working at the same place his brother has for years. While in line at the checkout, a young child, perhaps 5 years old, shyly made eye contact.

I knew the checkout lady, she's been there forever. I've been going there forever. The store has been there forever. My grandfather, born in 1898, used to work at another A&P when he was still a young man. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company has been around forever.

Forever's about to end.

***

The Business Roundtable folks may know how to run a business (though the recent evidence suggests otherwise--we're in for a long slide), but they know jack snot about biology.

All economies are ultimately based on reality, on the natural world. Soil. Water. Wood. Oil. Corn. Cotton. Wool. You can still follow the price of pork bellies in the New York Times business section.

If we continue to define prosperity by growth, even prettied up "sustainable growth," our children will be harmed.

Carrying capacity is the number of organisms of a particular species a given patch of Earth can sustain indefinitely.

In class I try to make connect my lambs to the world, to what's real, to what matters. I do not, however, want to give them nightmares--there's time enough for that in early adulthood.

If the NJ DOE continues to kneel down to the Business Roundtable and Achieve, Inc., and other groups who do not have the best interests of my students at heart, then do not be upset if I start sharing the truth.

Humans are animals. The land, the seas, have limits. The economy cannot (and will not) grow indefinitely. The living world is collapsing, and it's going to get ugly, real ugly, in a generation or two if those with money do not pull their heads out of their collective (and full) sigmoid colon.

The young girl I saw tonight, smiling as the checkout lady chatted in a dying store, does not deserve the education the Business Roundtable wants.

She deserves better. She deserves the truth.

The Business Roundtable lifted from their site.
The Monopoly photo from Life collection at Google.
And yep, I'm serious....we cannot handle the truth.

READ MORE - The Business Roundtable teaches biology

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.

Alvin Toffler

In two seemingly unrelated news items, we learn that kids spend about 7 1/2 hours plugged into media every day, and that corporations, blessed with the same rights of more corporeal citizens, will be allowed to run ads directly influencing federal races.

Alexis Tocqueville, the data is in, and the experiment has ended.

Draw your own conclusions.

READ MORE - It was a good run....