My Hospital Stay

Sorry, I meant to take pictures during my recent, brief hospitalization, but I forgot.

I just checked out this morning from my first stay in a stateside hospital.

Thats right - I spent the night in the hospital and none of you came to see me.

Don't feel bad, though. It's better that you didn't.

I went directly to the sleep center, where I had an appointment for a sleep study, and where I was redirected to the registration desk.

I checked in to Woodland Memorial Hospital at about 7 last night for a sleep study. I arrived to find a Jessica, a beleaguered, but friendly, hospital receptionist trying to cover the lunch-break of the hospital operator and find three different obstetricians to deliver or consult on four different deliveries, reroute patients from the emergency room to the intensive care unit, and track down a back-up X-ray technician to help the on-duty X-ray tech already overrun with patients.

Jessica eventually managed to get me checked in and sent me back upstairs to the sleep center, where my polysomnograph technician, Matt, explained the routine to me, had me fill out some forms and watch a video, hooked me up to more than a dozen different sensors, had me try out a couple of different CPAP masks in case I needed to be fitted with one in the middle of the night, and sent me to bed. (My sleep number is 100.)

I tossed and I turned. I listened to Matt greet and explain the routine to another patient whose appointment was an hour later than mine. I fell asleep. I woke up. I fell asleep. I woke up and called Matt in to disconnect me from the machine so I could use the restroom. I fell asleep. I woke up. Matt came in to reconnect a sensor I had removed in my sleep, but I assumed that morning had already come and that I had to get up. I asked "What time is it, anyway?"

"Uh. . . about three."

"Sweet!" I went back to sleep, and when Matt came in again two hours later, it was because it was time for me to get up. He disconnected me from the sensor array. He had me fill out a survey about the previous night's sleep, and I was able to shower there at the sleep center and wash from my hair and beard the glue out that had held the various sensors in place.

All in all, it was a fairly restless night's sleep and I think that I was right to take today off of work, despite the extra work that creates, but I look forward to learning the results of the study.

Will I have one of the eighty different known sleep disorders?

I'll find out in four weeks.

Genetic Engineering

I support genetic engineering and believe that its inevitable risks will be outweighed by its benefits. Further, I believe that our long-term survival as a species, like that of any species, will depend upon our ability to adapt to our changing environment. Further, I endorse reading Richard Dawkins.

Whack-a-Mole

Remember the arcade game you played as a kid, before everything was digital? Plastic moles pop up from apertures in the play surface and, armed with a foam mallet, the player is tasked with quickly smacking each mole as it appears before it can retreat unharmed.

Some days, teaching reminds me of whack-a-mole. Johnny, get quiet. Sally, sit down, please. Javier, get to work. Louise, don’t punch your neighbor. Paul, raise your hand. Beth, please write on paper instead of the desk. Johnny, get quiet. Sally, sit down, please. . .

I don’t think I’ve seen whack-a-mole in an arcade for a long time. I guess it must not be a big money-maker. Perhaps some people think it’s stupid and futile. Maybe they just tire of the monotony and wish that damned moles would stay where they belong and cooperate long enough to actually learn something.

Those of you who know something of pedagogy may now be foolishly shouting at your computer screens. If so, stop. I can’t hear you. I know that teaching doesn’t have to be futile – that if students are engaged, they will learn and they will be eager to do so. They will be eager to come to school and eager to work hard toward a real goal.

The difficulty in this is teaching engaging lessons – teaching creatively – while adhering to rigid, often arbitrary, standards designed to demand (but not support) mastery of increasingly outmoded skills of the lowest cognitive order. Our current system, overly scripted and nit-picky, often does only a mediocre job of preparing students for late-nineteenth-century factory work, and almost never does a good job of preparing them for the ever-changing challenges of the early-to-mid twenty-first century.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that No Child Left Behind is not the solution. Moreover, I believe that tighter regulation is not the answer. The best parents want the best education for their children and will insist on it. Teachers are creatures of conscience and work hard to do everything they can for their charges.

I know that not every teacher is great. I know that not every parent tracks their kids' education as they should. I also know that this is a reasonably self-policed system and that the money spent on enforcing NCLB would do more good spent in the classrooms.

The number one change needed: smaller class sizes - fewer students per teacher. Every student needs one-on-one time with an adult every day. They need someone they respect to listen to what they say.

Students don't need me scolding them for talking out of turn. They need a turn to talk.

Granted, it wouldn't hurt kids to have enough books for each of them. Furniture with surfaces unmarred by graffiti would be okay. If we actually aspired to prepare kids for tomorrow, we could integrate computers into all of their work, and be sure that they each have free access to a computer at home and at school.

We could give kids responsibility for work that really needs doing and the recognition that they have done it.

Rumor has it that some children can see the bare breasts of the Venus de Milo or hear the words "shit" and "damn" without their heads exploding. We don't need to Nerf the world. Kids will punch each other. They will call each other names. They will learn that there are better alternatives and they will grow.

We don't give our children enough credit. We don't give them enough time. We don't afford them the resources they deserve. They don't get what they need because we don't have the time right now, or we don't want to spend the money.

Guess what: when they rob a liquor store, we'll find the time, won't we? We'll send them to court and appoint an attorney and we'll prosecute them and send them to jail where they'll be supervised and fed and sent to bed until they can be paroled, supervised, work at a job which does not satisfy so they can buy things they don't need, go broke, run out of options, and go rob a liquor store.

Coddling, scolding, insulating, berating - we've tried these tactics and demonstrated that they don't work.

Now, let's try teaching.


Photo copyright 1999-2003 PrintingForLess.com and Creativepro.com

Bambi Meets Godzilla

Just in case you've never seen it. . .
I've loved this movie since I first saw it, in part because of the creator's name, and in part because I have a profoundly dark sense of humor.

Wishes

We've all seen motivational posters, either in an actual office, behind a pointy-haired boss, or in the popular media. You may have seen spoof versions. I found some and wanted to share them with you. You can see a whole slew of them here.

Today

I went to visit the Yuba Sutter Center for Spiritual Awakening, a local branch of an international organization, The United Church of Religious Science. They are an amicable group, and certainly interested in doing good, but not a perfect fit for me. With strong trappings of Christianity, and profound, and fundamental contradictions in their doctrine. I've long longed for a group of community-minded people with sensible ideas about religion. These folks are good people, and definitely open-minded, but their practice is too formal for me.

I came home after this and watched the dogs play. Please to enjoy. This is more my speed of religious practice. Beyond all of the learning and theorizing and good intention, enjoying the moment is the kind of practice that makes life good.

There are wonderful resources for investigation of the beyond within - Carl Hall's Philosophy of Religion class at Yuba College was certainly both engrossing and edifying, and I have met individuals with whom I have shared profound conversations. I try to post here occasionally, but have yet to illicit a response. I enjoy reading and listening to Alan Watts. These are all good, but I have hoped to find a group with whom to meet regularly, with whom to talk about religious ideas, with whom to perform community service.

Perhaps I'll still find such a group. Perhaps I'll forge one myself. Perhaps I'll just get over the impulse. We'll see.

Rhonda!

Reuters reports that a seven-year-old macaw foiled a burglary when he hear a disturbance in the pet shop where he resides and started shouting for his former owner.

A New Look, a New Link

I updated the look ( as if you hadn't noticed. Let me know if you hate it. I also added another blog to the links at left: Rude Cactus. I think it's somewhat interesting, which is a fair site better than what you've found here lately, but hey, I deserve proper credit - I'm back at work and still updating, not one, but two blogs.

Rules for Clear Writing

1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should never generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Do not use multiple exclamation points NOR all caps for emphasis!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
34. The passive voice should never be used.
35. Do not put statements in the negative form.
36. A writer must not shift your point of view.
37. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
38. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
39. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
40. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
41. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
42. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
43. Always pick on the correct idiom.
44. The adverb always follows the verb.
45. Be careful to use the rite homonym.
    
    And last...

46. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Music Box

This is neat. Turn on the sound and check it out. Now.

Big T, Our Tree Guy

This guy is awesome for all the reasons you don't think about until after you've been through a few contractors:
He charges reasonable (or better) rates.
He is personable.
He shows up consistently and dependably when he's needed. (About a half-hour after the appointed time, but he usually calls to explain why he'll be late.)
He's no-nonsense.

Free As A Bird - The Beatles

It's been too long since I celebrated these musicians here.

Panoramas

A cool feature of my new camera, one I forgot to mention earlier, is that it helps me take photos which can later be stitched together into a panorama.

Blogger Discovery

I just realized that the order in which I publish blog posts is meaningless. Only the order in which they are drafted matters: First drafted = first posted. Ah well.

New Camera

I was pretty happy with my old camera for the most part. A Samsung Digimax S800, Shel bought me the camera almost two years ago. It was easy to operate and with 8.1 megapixels, I could just shoot the general area where my desired photographic subject appeared and zoom in after the fact. It was small. It had a whole grip of special features, bells and whistles, and built-in editing capabilities. I liked the camera.

Until it died.

We were at a friend's house for New Years and it stopped. It wouldn't turn on. It wouldn't retract. It wouldn't do anything. I replaced the batteries and still got nothing. I took it to Sam's Club, where it was purchased, and they just asked for the stuff that went with it. We went home, found the geegaws and the receipt and took it back. Sam's club took back the "defective" camera and gave me a gift card. I turned around and bought a new camera, a Canon Powershot SX100 IS. So far, so good. I shot some test shots and am learning to use the thing. This has only 8.0 megapixels, but has a 10x optical zoom instead of the 3x of the old Samsung. I even took some footage of yesterday's weather and if I can get the internet to cooperate, I'll post it.

Sturm und Drang

While the wind subsided a bit, but before it got really bad, I decided to try out my new camera.

Great what a power-outage will encourage one to do, isn't it? Above is just a short view of what happens when the wind and rain pick up at our house. Later, the wind picked up some more, knocking down a 50' Italian cypress and the weird willow-like plant monstrosity in the most-distant corner of the yard, taking out several sections of fence, and prompting us to ask the tree guy take down the giant sequoia my father foolishly planted in the back yard. Shel sometimes expresses a wish that my dad were still alive, just so she could berate him for some of the decisions he made. Tree felling is not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than the deductible on the homeowner's insurance. If the sequoia comes down on its own, it will likely take out the neighbors' garage.

My sister Suzanne doesn't have the tree problems that we do, but she's gotten her share of fun out of the storm as well.

Yum (potential)

In need of a metaphorical market-leader for a recent post, I happened across something tantalizing. I hope to taste these soon. They sound delicious.In fact, I encountered a whole realm of products for which I had never meant to search. What a fascinating world we live in.

Poison Well Before Drinking

Apple computers, though argued by their fans to be a vastly superior product to PCs, represent a relatively small portion of the personal- and business- computing market. I don't know enough about them to make an argument regarding their virtues or shortcomings, but I have long believed that the reason Apple computers didn't long ago go belly-up is their forward-thinking move to put MacIntosh computers into a whole slew of public-school classrooms. I used them in school, both as a student and as a teacher, but I believe that I might never have heard of them if Apple had not chosen this particular brand of advertising. Note also, that a long-employed tactic of drug-pushers is to give away their product until the hook is set, so to speak.Intel has recently chosen a different tactic and it may take some time to evaluate the relative wisdom of their plan.

In short. One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit program designed to distribute cheap computers to the third world entered into a partnership with Intel wherein Intel would give the organization money and would work on designing a computer for them using an Intel processor instead of one from competitor Advanced Micro Devices. Intel sales staff are reported to have then told the representatives of foreign governments buying the One Laptop computers that they would be better-off buying a competing (and more expensive) device directly from Intel, and even disparaging the product they were to have been endorsing. One of these government officials is a long-time acquaintance of the founder of the One Laptop Per Child movement.

A falling out has ensued and Intel has now withdrawn from the program. Intel is an industry juggernaut, leading their field in market share for a long time. I am suspicious, though, that a long view might have lead them to play this one differently.

I have been given the impression that growth in any market most benefits the company which leads that market. If I work for Frito-Lay, and I give away Bob's Potato Chips to people in the third world who have never before tasted potato chips, I can expect those people to eventually develop a taste for potato chips (lower case) They will eat potato chips whether they are free or expensive. They will consume potato chips from every manufacturer, but mostly they will eat Frito-Lay potato chips - because Frito-Lay leads the market.

Every new market helps the industry leader.

I don't know if consumer resentment has an impact on long-term sales or if this move will even breed resentment towards Intel.