In the Shorties of Darkness

Remember a couple decades ago when kids made fun of fat kids? Aw heck, even films like Full Metal Jacket remind us that being fat used to be stigmatic. Well times have changed! The nice folks at Boing Boing point us to CDC data on the rise of obesity. As one of the Boing Boing commentators points out, this data is based on what people said over the phone to investigators. Now, nobody ever lies about their weight, do they? Yeah right, so these figures are probably optimistic. As if to provide harmony to this continuing song, Alton Brown points out that “Food doesn’t get up and jump down our throats.”

As if it weren’t hard enough for America’s senior citizens to figure out which Medicare prescription drug plan is best for them, it turns out that when they call the companies which offer the plans to ask for more information, they will only get a correct answer about a third of the time, and the mistakes in question can cost “thousands” a year. Oops.

Again, thanks to Boing Boing, a paper on the actual mathematical odds of finding a genuine, bona fide terrorist through the monitoring of “all” phone calls and e-mail. For those of you who are impatient, the odds of finding a real terrorist is almost zero.

Thanks to Atrios and the folks at Eschaton for this one. Will somebody please stick a fork in Leiberman? He’s done! This would be a lovely time for a concession speech. USA Today says his “divisive actions don’t deserve support.” Actions like “fudging facts.” His attempts to form his own political party smell of sour grapes all the way over here on the other coast. What, the Republicans won’t take him? Who is the “Sore Loserman” now? The first DINOsaur* is dying if not dead, let the mass extinction begin; viva Howard Dean.

From Craigslist. “Lost: constitutional rights and safeguards. if found, please return to United States of America.”

New rules promise to reduce welfare rolls by making it more difficult to comply with the requirements, thus insuring an underclass of low wage menial laborers for the next generation.

A researcher finds that there are “two types of genius.” In short, those who peak young, and those who get better with time.

A plan, called Grass Banks, is trying to create a win-win situation for ranchers and the environment. So much for the idea that environmentalism costs jobs.

And in closing, “The Cult of Leia’s Metal Bikini.”

*Democrat In Name Only.

Aw Shoot.

It is my personal opinion — and forgive me if you’ve heard me say it before — that everything that goes on at a school needs to be measured by one double edged yardstick: Is it safe, and does it help educate children? If something isn’t safe, it doesn’t belong in school, end of discussion. If it doesn’t help educate children, it is suspect. There’s a lot of leeway on this side, because sometimes non-educational issues effect learning. For example, school breakfast programs don’t really teach kids much (except maybe what a balanced breakfast looks like when it doesn’t include a bowl of sugary, unnaturally colored breakfast cereal), but hungry kids have a hard time thinking about math.

Now, one thing that The People In Charge say is that they want students to be able to solve problems. Many schools have elaborate programs with catchy acronyms to help kids solve problems. Yet actions speak louder than words, and most schools say through their actions that they don’t really care if problems get solved, as long as we can pretend everything is just fine.

All too many times, a problem is misidentified. You have probably had this experience: you try to talk to somebody about a problem, and that somebody focuses on the example you used instead of the underlying issue, or worse yet they percieve the problem as something completely unrelated to the matter at hand.

This brings me to an item I read this morning. “According to the U.S. Department of Education’s latest figures possible, in 2002, more than 2,500 children were expelled from school for a period of one year for bringing a firearm to school.” That’s pretty serious! Granted, there are over 47 million kids, in almost a quarter of a million schools. But to put this in perspective, the number of kids were expelled for bringing firearms to school in 2002 is roughly equal to the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq to date. Please remember, this is only the number of kids who brought guns to school who were both caught and expelled. There is no way to know how many kids brought guns to school without being caught, or how many were caught but not expelled for some reason.

The item in question, correctly, goes on: “Statistics like this should give us pause and ask, ‘Why and how are children getting their hands on guns?'” Why and How are exactly the right questions, and in the right order! How unfortunate that the rest of the article focuses on the fact that we must keep guns out of the hands of kids because after all guns can kill people.

When I see the examples outlined — kids wanting to make “another Columbine” or “kill classmates and faculty” — I can’t help but ask why?? What is going on at these schools that this seems like a good idea? What is so horrible in that environment that killing people seems like a perfectly good way to solve the problem?

Of course guns are not safe and therefore do not belong in school. However, an environment that makes kids believe violence can solve their problems is also not safe, and also does not belong in school.

In closing: sure, it’s a great idea to send a bunch of white supremacists to be peacekeepers in a place where everybody is brown; the 10 most powerful figures in the Religious Right; you may have a Bad Boss, but I bet he didn’t try to have you put in jail as a terror suspect; and job growth is less than expected, with 121,000 new jobs being created in June (revised May number is 92,000). Remember, the economy needs between 150,000 and 200,000 new jobs in a month just to keep up with new people entering the workforce. So when the White House points out that 1.85 million jobs were created in the last 12 months, they are hoping you won’t notice that barely keeps up with demand.

Please notice, “Teaching, Learning, and Education” is a new topic category here on ShortWoman. I will be revising the category on old items. If you have linked to them, please be aware that you may have to revise the link. Sorry for the inconvenience.

What Happened to our Food??

It seems like when I was a kid, “food poisoning” was something that happened if Aunt Margaret left the macaroni salad in the sun too long, or what your brother got if he actually ate what came out of that puffed-up can in the pantry. Sure, Great Aunt Gertrude said that you should never ever lick the beaters when she made cookies because raw eggs carried a risk of salmonella, but you’d never heard of that actually happening to anybody, and you secretly beleived she told you that just to keep you out of the kitchen while she was baking.

Then we all got older. We would help out in the kitchen, and if a tablespoon or so of ground beef got put into our mouths intead of directly into the meatloaf mix, that was ok. Just don’t ever do that with pork or poultry, ok? Mom would say.

Maybe you remember Thanksgiving turkey. Mom would always get way-too-big a bird and you’d be eating turkey until December 1. And then she’d get a big roast beef for Christmas and the leftovers would last several days. Last year you cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving and the leftovers were barely palatable on the Saturday after. As much as you like roast beef, you didn’t have the courage to cook it yourself.

Then we got older still, and The Authorities said we must be sure we cook meat completely or we risk DEATH from food-bourne pathogens. Now, some of us who had paid attention in Social Studies remembered reading that in third world nations like Ethiopia, they eat raw beef all the time. Some of us started to wonder how exactly they could serve raw beef safely there when we had to cook it silly here, in the land of refrigerators and cattle drives.

Time continued to move, and now Great Aunt Gertrude’s caution is standard, and most people would never think to order a hamburger medium rare — assuming they are someplace where a burger is thick enough to be more than either “raw” or “well done”. I haven’t done beef since 2003, when the United States identified its first case of “mad cow disease.” Now, of course, we are all waiting to see if bird flu will effect poultry flocks in the Western Hemisphere, and whether or not it will spread to humans and become a pandemic.

As if the risk of pathogens was not enough, I first became aware that the food we were eating was maybe not as nutritious as might be optimum a dozen years ago after reading a book called “Please, Doctor, Do Something.” I quickly progressed to the writings of people like Andrew Weil, and came to think that just maybe, more of the household food should come from places that sold organic products. It turns out that many other households have decided the same thing, and now demand for organic products exceeds supply. We already risk weakened rules on organic food, and this news will put further pressure on the system.

My vegetarian friends know that around the beginning of the year, I started asking questions and prowling around for favorite cookbooks. I do not run a fully vegetarian household; it’s loosely pescatarian if not flexitarian. Nor do we eat this way for any kind of spiritual ideal. When I started to consider the idea that “all life is sacred,” I failed to come up with any reason why animal life should be more sacred than plant life. Since just about everything that humans can eat comes from animals or plants, I quickly decided that this was not an adequate yardstick by which I could measure a diet.

Nevertheless, it was clear that our food supply was in trouble, and meat was a riskier proposition than veggies, so we tried “going veggie” for a week. Then we went on a second week. I emptied the freezer of leftover meat one meal at a time, and we kept on eating a largely pescatarian menu. Week after week progressed, and we ate more veggies, fish a couple times a week, but no real meat except occasionally at restaurants. We don’t use a lot of meat substitutes, either.

Fast forward to last week, when for the first time in months, I bought and cooked chicken. More specifically, I bought frozen chicken, took it directly home, put it directly in the freezer, defrosted it days later, and immediately cooked it. If you care, I made Chicken Stroganov, a family favorite that just doesn’t work with tofu. We put the leftovers away immediately after dinner.

The next morning, the leftovers were not fit for human consumption. It was a plastic container of gamey, unappetizing goo.

Our food quality in this nation is continuing to decline. Casual conversations reveal that it is not my imagination that meat just doesn’t keep like it used to. For that matter, onions are much more bitter than they used to be, and tomatos are much mushier than they used to be. The very idea that food quality is declining in quality in “the richest nation on earth” is quite repugnant to me, but I am at a loss for what to do.

What has gone wrong with our food supply, and what can we do to fix it?

In closing, Dick Cheney betting on economic collapse; a late cartoon for Independence Day; we don’t have an illegal immigration problem but rather an illegal employer problem; 20 amazing facts about voting in the United States; maybe we can’t find Osama because we are no longer looking but at least he helped Bush win in 2004; and gas prices stall prices of big vehicles.

The Shorties Have Eyes

It’s a small world, after all. Is so happens we are all more closely related than you probably thought. We all have a common ancestor who lived about 3000 to 5000 years ago.

Experts aren’t sure whether we should actually tell obese kids the truth. The important quote: “If that same person came into your office and had cancer, or was anemic, or had an ear infection, would we be having the same conversation? There are a thousand reasons why this obesity epidemic is so out of control, and one of them is no one wants to talk about it.” Let’s stop pretending that “little” Johnny and Susie have some “baby fat” and admit that maybe their parents should pay a little more attention to what they eat.

In other medical news, “Docs seem to know when speedy C-section is needed.” All I can say to that is I certainly hope so!

The President and his ideological cousins say “How dare the New York Times actually talk about a supposedly secret program that was already openly talked about over 4 years ago!” Excuse me, does anyone beleive that the Evil Terraists are so dumb they don’t know how to launder money?

“Gosh, it seems like soldiers get younger and younger.” Or at least the recruiting materials do.

George Lakoff has more to say. To put it succinctly, “It’s not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it’s the conservative agenda.”

A cartoon you might like.

In this day and age, it is absolutely amazing the strange places you find sexism. What is even more amazing is that many people just won’t talk about their own sexist views.

Remember, “They” hate us for our freedoms.

And finally, a warm welcome to the blogosphere for Maya’s Granny! This is a lady to watch in the future. This post on the HPV vaccine is absolutely on target.

I am not a number!

One news item that probably escaped your attention — and who could blame you as many things as are going on in the world — is that a coalition of industry, government, and academic experts are forming a center whose purpose is to study and come up with ways to prevent identity theft. Identity theft is a serious problem. Here’s what the federal government has to say about it. As we speak, legislation is circulating around the Senate and House that — although it would not prevent identity theft at all — would at least attempt to create uniform guidelines about what financial institutions would have to do in the event that consumer data is compromised. Some experts opine that many problems could be avoided if common sense were more common.

Here’s a radical thought: let’s start preventing identity theft by agreeing not to pass financial information around like mashed potatoes at Sunday Dinner!

We can start by not putting Social Security Numbers on documents such as health insurance cards and school ID cards. We can continue by not putting Social Security Numbers in state driver’s license records. Let’s limit access to Social Security Numbers to entities who have a legitimate tax, credit, or financial reason to know. Your boss needs your Social Security Number so he can pay the taxes associated with your employment. Your High School has no legitimate reason to know your Social Security Number. Your college might need it if you receive student aid, but your professors don’t need it.

Then let’s have a long hard look at the sorts of data corporate America has. Some of it they have — legitimately — because of doing business with you. Some of it they have because they bought or “shared” it with another business. And some of that data is in turn bought or shared from yet a third or fourth or fiftieth business. Company A might know you own a microwave oven made by Company B, purchased at Company C, through a data purchased from Company D, but what business is it of theirs? I mean really. Why do they need to know? And are the big data warehouses of aggregated consumer information really a benefit to real people? Or are they just a way for corporate America to sell us more stuff and have more information about us? Such databases are already being used by law enforcement to get around petty little things like search warrants. Not surprisingly, they are also being used by criminals to find targets.

Maybe then we can deal with computer security, and seriously ask companies why Social Security Numbers would ever be kept on a laptop computer, and why a computer with such information would ever be allowed off the premises. Yes, those are all different instances. I guess it’s hard to learn from the mistakes of others.

In closing, The President calls the press a tattle-tale for daring to say things that are unflattering but true. Wisely, he doesn’t look in his own back yard.

Single White Shorties

Open Letter to the new CIA director.

A little book for kids (or maybe not for kids!) about file sharing from Defective Yeti and Goopy called Files Are Not for Sharing. Can you say satire? Sure you can!

From the world of healthcare we have three completely unrelated items: Jim Hightower’s 4 Big Lies About Universal Healthcare; a new book about “medical tourism”; and a missive from the Duhpartment of Research, “People who can walk to shops and services in their neighborhoods are more fit and less likely to die in car crashes.”

I am the mommy, I am the internet filtering software. ‘Nuff said.

Follow up on John Stossel and his views regarding the American educational system. You may recal my discussing him way back in January.

A few items on the minimum wage. If Alternet strikes you as being too “progressive” for you, here’s the Christian Science Monitor. They discuss people having to hold down multiple jobs to make ends meet. I wonder if raising the minimum wage to a “living wage” would have the net effect of job growth as those people pare down to one job (leaving job openings for the currently unemployed). This is a completely unsubstantiated theory, but worth thinking about. The people at Let Justice Roll have been campaigning for a “living wage” on a state-by-state, non-partisan basis for some time now. I became familiar with their work last week, and was impressed by the stark common sense of “A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.”

Of course the Senate has blocked legislation raising the minimum wage. Indeed, Congress has spent most of the week doing things that are against the wishes of the people who elected them but good for the deep pocket big business interests that keep them in golf money. Two things to watch for in the coming months are the so-called “analog hole” and Net Neutrality.

And a couple of science items. Scientists have found a giant underwater volcano that is bigger than Washington D.C.! Elsewhere, a completely different groupf of scientists say the earth is warmer now than it has been in 400 years, and yes it is the fault of humans.

Things I Have Learned Recently About Education

The two most misused phrases in the education world today are “developmentally appropriate” and “kinesthetic learner.” In that order. When I was in school “peer group relations” and “self-esteem” were the most misused buzz-terms. But in real life, kids can do much more than most adults give them credit for, regardless of age; and the vast majority of kids called “kinesthetic learners” would be a whole lot less kinesthetic if somebody took away their sugar fix.

When it comes to standardized testing, there is a fine line between not enough and too much.

Most (accredited) private schools are better than bad public schools, but a startling number are really only as good as good public schools. Any private school that does not have a waiting list can’t really afford to let students get too far ahead of “good public school” levels, because it will hurt recruiting. If your 5th graders are doing 7th grade work, how do you get more 5th graders, and what do you do with them if they come? Put them in 3rd grade?

You can learn a lot about a teacher or school administrator by what they think about “drill and kill” versus “practice makes perfect.”

Remember when I said that if I were education czar I would compile standards of what kids should know and be able to do at what grade? It turns out that Washington is doing just that, albeit with less community input than I think would be optimal. Also, these are state standards, not national ones. The national standard under NCLB is still “better.”

A some point parents need to let kids develop responsibility for themselves. Preferably, this should be before college. It’s one thing to stand up for your kid, it’s another thing to do everything for your kid.

Dyslexia may be overrated.

Not new information to me, but it still bears mentioning that “educational flavor of the year” is not a good way to run a school. Wouldn’t it be simpler to use tried-and-true things that are proven to work? Sometimes I think the idea is that the teachers get bored with the old-fashioned way of doing things.

It has not been my imagination that textbooks are getting dumber. I first noticed this in 4th grade, and things have only gotten worse since then. If I may paraphrase Bart Simpson, “Now let me get this straight. We are behind, so we are going to catch up by going slower? Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

A bunch of parents are starting to think that — since everybody says kids learn languages better and faster than grown-ups — Asian languages might be a better choice for schools to teach than Spanish in the coming century.

Good item on teacher recruiting here.

I hope you have enjoyed these admittedly random facts, and that you will be encouraged to think about education (among other things) for yourself.

In closing: How does this work? “Social Security numbers, names, and addresses, and were transmitted to an unknown hacker by the keylogger,” yet “No taxpayer financial data was lost to the keylogger.” Which is it? Krugman on the fear of fear itself. Star Trekking across American forests and Scottish Highlands. Apologies to Mel Brooks, but it must be good to be King. Coming soon to a news report near you, Crisis in Palestine. The West cut off the money to starve the “terrorists,” but the terrorists are the only ones with money. Muhammed Average gets caught in the middle. Norway is prepared for the End of the World as We Know It, but do they feel fine? And finally, the Duhpartment of Research shows that vegetables are good for you.

Security Theatre Act XIII and Cartoon Short Reel

Security Theatre XIII: I Know Who I Am, But Who Are You?

I have said before that ID cards may tell you who someone is, but they do not tell you whether or not he is a Bad Guy. In short, nobody has an ID card stamped with “Terrorist” or “Tax Cheat.” You are lucky if it is marked “organ donor.” That’s only one problem with using ID cards as a crime and terror fighting tool.

Notice, that the ID card only may tell you who someone is. It might also be fake. And as much as the Federal government wants to make sure people aren’t using fake identification, they seem to be having a hard time identifying fake IDs.* Since the people who make fake IDs will always come up with ways to continue counterfeiting them, fake IDs constitute a second problem with using ID cards as a crime and terror fighting tool.

The flipside of this issue is that it is possible to falsely use the identity of a real person: identity theft. It’s a huge problem that is growing bigger all the time, sometimes aided by the very offices we trust to keep our personal information private. Identity theft is yet a third reason why ID cards should not be used as a tool to fight crime and terror.

If you have not yet read Bruce Schneier’s essay on the fact that ID cards can’t make us safer, you really should.

Cartoon Short Reel: The Zany Adventures of Economy and Education!

Oh that wacky Economy! He seems to be slowing down, and he doesn’t know why! Inflation is continuing to rise, and as much as he says it’s just energy costs, the core is up too, and worse yet worker’s wages aren’t keeping up! It looks like the mean old FOMC is gonna have to raise interest rates again! I wonder how Economy is gonna hide from the FOMC this time. And as if that isn’t enough bad news for poor old Economy, he’s managed to lose $2 Million Million dollars of investors’ money. It’s enough to give poor Economy a heart attack, but hilarity continues at the hospital, since “the nation’s emergency-care system is overcrowded and overwhelmed, ‘at its breaking point,’ concludes a major investigation….”

Meanwhile, silly Education has managed to get herself wedged between a policy that won’t meet its goals and a system that refuses to measure how far from the goal they are in the first place! Oh Education, how do you get yourself into these messes?

Oh, and a follow up on the President’s upcoming visit to the Seattle area.

*Not to muddy the issue, but the ID in question was of the type issued by the Mexican Consulate to Mexican citizens for identification purposes. To the best of my knowledge CNN is wrong that they are only issued to “illegal” aliens; that may be the de facto use as legal aliens would have other forms of ID available to them. Furthermore it was a fake consular ID! But the article mentions that “The cards are not valid for entry into federal government buildings.” A lot of people think we need to provide a valid way for illegal aliens to find legal jobs, but if they can’t enter a Federal government building, how can they possibly apply for any kind of normalized status?

The Amityville Shorties

Nihon no Shashin (or, Japanese Pictures). Pictures of post-war Japan. Or maybe you prefer traditional Japanese crafts. Or lucky maneki-neko cats? Or wood-block prints by Hiroshige? No pictures, but there is always Gaijin Smash! and over on the right, Pureland Mountain.

Duh Filter. Girls approach video-games differently from boys and want different things from them. On a completely unrelated note, How To Guarantee Failure.

Stuff we didn’t learn in college but should have. Some colleges are actually teaching courses on stuff your mom and dad should have taught you, but that nowadays parents have a tendency to keep doing for their (ostensibly) adult children. And an overlap from “Duh Filter,” Employers take the time to Google you and read your public blog. Now might be a good time to go delete embarassing posts and maybe put up a nice thoughtful essay about something that interests you, mmkay?

How now brown cow? Moo! BLEAGH! Woogawooga!! More American cases of Mad Cow disease. And remember, we are still only testing a few hundred thousand of the millions of cows slaughtered in the United States. How does the old saying go, you can’t find a fever if you don’t take a temperature?

Traffic Friday Is Gonna Suck. President Bush is coming to my town at the end of the week. One local columnist has proposed a “to-do” list for him. I’ll add an 11th agenda item to consider: The UAW is calling for Universal Health Care. Funny how the CEOs of the Big Three have not caught on how their costs would be lowered if they didn’t have to worry about the health insurance expenses they are often whining about.

If it ain’t The Man keepin you down, it’s El Hombre! I’ve seen the argument before, but now it’s hitting the mainstream news that illegal immigrants may make it harder for (legal) black workers to get jobs. It could be worse, they could be moms.

Economic Indicators. Today the Cleveland Fed President said that current inflation numbers exceed her comfort level. Remember, she and other Fed officials are speaking of the official CPI number, which my readers know is manipulated to look as rosy as possible. A couple of major stock indices are officially in “correction” (a drop of at least 10%) and risk going into a “bear” market (a drop of at least 20%). The housing market isn’t looking so good, either. Keep all this in mind — and remember who controls Congress — come November.

Time-Waster In closing I bring you things so cute that diabetics better check their insulin levels before clicking! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Cute Overload!

Yeah, Universal Healthcare Sucks.

So it turns out that not only are Americans less healthy than the British (who have universal health coverage), Americans are also less healthy than the Canadians (who also have universal health coverage).

Specifically, Americans suffered with more diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, and arthritis. More Americans were overweight, more Americans reported not being able to afford medications. You might find it to be of concern that Canadians are three times more likely to have an unacceptable wait time to see a doctor, but it’s still only 3.5%. Think about that the next time your 10:15 appointment begins at 11:00. By contrast, Americans are seven times more likely to put off medical care because they can’t afford it.

Even Forbes is running an article that quotes experts saying things like “We (Americans) have the best doctors, best hospitals, and best nurses in the world. But the way we finance healthcare just doesn’t let us do the job. Given what we are now spending on our healthcare system, we can do better — if we just had national health insurance and were allowed to do it right.” In short, The Best is available to Americans, but it doesn’t matter if we can’t afford it. And that’s in Forbes, a publication with well-known old-fashioned socially and fiscally conservative philosophies.

The time has come to stop mucking about with an expensive system that doesn’t work, and implement a system that has already been proven in several nations.

In closing: another strand of the Gordian Knot called immigration; one town tries to decide what to do when a river doesn’t run through it anymore; the last two CEOs turned Treasury Secretary did such a fine job that President Bush nominated a third one for the job; we need alternative energy sources so badly we can’t bother with conservation anymore; and finally (thanks Brian), a man who is tough on a bathtub.