Ed 530 Calendar

My First Foray Into Podcasting

I've recently upgrade to IOS 6.0 which has Siri.  I am so excited.  I have been waiting for something like this since I first read The Age of the Spiritual Machine and learned about the "Teddy".  While I am just learning about it, I decided to blog about the update, Siri, and the new Podcast app that was included.  I hope you enjoy.  Click link below and then click on download DB ABFAB.mp3.  It will start momentarily.  

                                      

https://sites.google.com/site/dgetty66/filecabinet

                                 

  

Wired Rooster

There is a new coffee shop in our town, and I'm surprised by how excited I am about it.  I guess it's because the town I live in is so small, and one hour away from anything resembling a city.  The Wired Rooster, as the shop is known, is reminiscent of a NYC coffee shop.  It's eclectic and fun, and I have been there two times in the last 16 hours.  The weird thing is is that I don't even like coffee.  The only coffee I every really liked was the latte I used to buy at the convenience store, and I doubt there was any real coffee in that anyway.  I am now considering memorizing some Jack Kerouac and performing at open mic night.

“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

UK GUARDIAN: The Chicago strike is typical of American politicians' war on teachers

The Chicago teachers' strike is barely a day old, and the teacher-bashing is already well underway with great gusto.

As you may have heard, these teachers are greedy, lazy bullies who are holding kids hostage in their mad lust for power. Their choice of profession is not at all motivated by an interest in child betterment, but entirely by the obscenely lavish salaries they receive – some even approaching those of skilled jobs that actually contribute to the public good, like sales managers and insurance underwriters. All this at – never forget – taxpayers' expense. Even liberal bloggers warn that this strike will leave children forever scarred and ruin their future earnings, or at least their test scores.

Teachers might respond that they're not striking over money: both the teachers' union and the school board acknowledge the two sides are close to agreement on wages. They might point out that their demands that are the real sticking points – smaller class sizes and air-conditioned classrooms – are entirely reasonable things most parents also want for their kids. Or they might point out that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's key demand to tie teacher evaluations to student test performance reflects a bureaucratic zeal to replace more and more of the curriculum with standardized tests (one Chicago teacher says 18 to 25 days of the school year are already lost to testing) – an ethos and aim that many parents, and certainly most students, do not share.

Then, at a certain point, teachers' unions woke up to find their favorability rating hovering somewhere between al-Qaida's and herpes. This didn't happen overnight, but a confluence of state budget crises, urban blight and suburban flight, a well-funded school reform movement and private charter school industry created the need for a scapegoat for bad public schools. Could it be their financing structure, dependent locally on grossly unequal property tax revenues? Or their unaccountable school boards, such as the one appointed by Rahm Emanuel? Might poverty and unemployment not be to blame? The drug economy? Poor parenting? No, none of the above. It's teachers and their pesky insistence that they know how best to educate kids simply because they spend most of the day with them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/11/chicago-strike-union-teachers

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
 

Oscar Wilde

Blogging has never appealed to me. I think it has to do with opening up a door and allowing people to see a side of you that you may not want them to see.  With your thoughts out there, you have no control over what may follow.  Will others see your attempts at humor as witty or banal?  Will a flame war break out?  What if I only get 6 page views!

Mostly though, I find blogging pretentious. Kind of like now.  For some reason you are reading this while I pontificate on why blogging has never appealed to me.  And you might be like, "Yeah, this guy gets it.  He really understands this issue, and has touched something deep in my soul."  (Ok, I know that isn't going to happen)

I never really understood the driving need to share mundane facts about yourself.  Do I really need people to know that I ate great Sushi in Ft. Lee NJ?  *BTW, I did, and it changed my life.  I haven't enjoyed Sushi the same way since.*  I could send out a tweet, link it to Google Earth, tag a photo on Instagram, and/or upload a review on Yelp.  

Or, as I prefer, I could enjoy my Sushi, quietly thinking about the ring I have in my pocket, looking across the table at the woman to whom the next day I will ask to become my wife, looking deep into her eyes and say, "Wow!!  This is the best Sushi I've ever had."