Summer Holiday

I have been a relatively longish one, which is soon to end. But as a way of easing back into the world of words. All the bikes had Bontrager Race Hardcase tires, the bad weather bike has now Continental tourers of some sort and in the winter studded. Why  Hardcase, you ask:

The shredded rubber was over 2/3 of the whole tire. I don't know for how long I rode around on this but it was at least 3 weeks. Plus the  bike sat for a week before I changed the tire today and, get this, when I took it off the bike it was still hard as rock. When you need to get from here to there and back again without worrying about a flat, Hardcases it is.

Also over to Gin and Tacos,  Ed mocks Sarah Palin's bbq cum fundraiser garb and insists that her decision to "dress like the Lord Mayor of MILF Island" rendered her no longer a serious person. Leaving aside the obvious sexist bullshit in the MILF comment, remember when Obama wore a bike helmet or blue jeans some jackasses thought looked like "mom jeans"? 

That kind of "analysis" was stupid, pointless crap then and it is now. You sir are on notice.

Religious Exceptions

The Right want's to allow moral and religious standards to govern obedience to secular law, at least when it's their ox being gored. How, one wonders, do they view (via) this particular case of the religious objections:

Dozens of Israel Postal Company employees in Ramat Gan refused to distribute thousands of copies of the New Testament to city residents. They claimed such distribution is forbidden according to the halacha laws, and might even be illegal.

This is the kind of situation that arises when nut jobs seek to Balkanize  one nation under God, as it were. On what level do they think that dividing us against ourselves on narrow theological grounds represents 100 percent Americanism.

The Headless Horseman

I've mentioned on more than one occasion that one of the real problems of higher education is  bloated and over-paid administrations. From Marc Bousquet comes the news that some high schools are doing away with their administrations in an attempt to democratize school governance. This tactic and/or strategy needs to be implemented more widely.

It's not just that administrators are grossly overpaid, have used their power to increase the number of administrators at the expense of educators, and generally louse up the joint; it's that they are more interested in showing the necessity of administration by introducing all manner of badly thought ought blueprints for the future, which don't work and cause the rest of endless agony. It's also that they are just so damned bad at administering. Seriously, I know of various ad hoc faculty who are waiting to find out if they will teach next semester when their current semester ends in three weeks because the administrator hasn't contacted them. Even worse, when asked directly when it might please the king do deign and tell his vassals when he and or she will make the decision no definite answer is forth coming.

This state of uncertainty, as you might imagine, means that morale is low as the semester draws to a close and that there will be only limited time to prepare for next semester's courses. Indeed, the deadline, so I am told, for ordering next semester's books was November 1.

Think about that if you would.

This situation and others like it are whats missing in the discussion of educational reform: The very real harm caused by increasing the power and authority of administrators over educators. If Arne Duncan and President Obama want to do something positive, as opposed to doing something because something needs to be done, they should work on re-balancing the power differential between administrators and educators.

I said this before and I'll say it again, all you educational reformer professionals tell us how you  plan on giving educators as educators a seat at the table when the discussion turns to reforming schools? Until administrators and know-nothing do-gooders, like Bill Gates, are forced to include educators in the process of reform, nothing beneficial is going to come of it.

Is It Ironic?

This publisher found a lost James M. Cain novel. They use covers like this:

And this:

Is it ironic or just tacky?