No freedom of speech in the high school classroom

A teacher has been put on leave for stating that some people compare Bush to Hitler, among other things.

Per CNN:
AURORA, Colorado (AP) -- About 150 high school students walked out of class to protest a decision to put a teacher on leave while administrators investigate remarks he made about President Bush in class, including that some people compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.

Here are a couple of quotes:

Bennish [Bush says] "It's our job to conquer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to," Bennish can apparently be heard saying on the tape. "Now I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obviously they're not, OK. But (there are) eerie similarities to the tones that they use."

The kid who recorded him: "He wanted us to question why a coke headed, alcoholic who's had all of his jobs have failed but one, and whose daddy bought him into office became the President of the United States," Allen said during the show.

Yes...please do question that!

Here's a link to the whole transcript of the lecture: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004689.htm

Here's an audio link: http://secure.eonstreams.com/koa_am/GeoTeacher.mp3

I just finished reading the transcript. I think that I would have said everything that Bennish said, so I can't disagree with him. I thought that he hedged his statements as well as could be expected. I can't help but wonder how fair and balanced a similar lecture would have been from the father of the boy. In my experience, "fair and balanced" is usually applied to whoever does/says things in the way of the person judging whether it is "fair and balanced". It's very rare, perhaps impossible, to find an individual who can be truly impartial.

Bennish was providing an alternative perspective. Students need to learn that there is more to US History and foreign policy than what is presented in School House Rock and the news. If the students are paying any attention at all to the media and political banter in this day and age, they have probably already heard the administration's version of things.

Free speech, people! Free thoughts! Students should learn to be critical consumers of media, propaganda, and politics!

I'm concered abou the precident set by this. The recording and denouncing of teachers is problematic from the point of view of students who just want to be able to listen to the lecture later. Even when I was in high school, some teachers were skitish about having their lectures recorded, and they weren't saying anything controversial. (I've even read about people wanting college students to turn in college professors!)

Ultimately, I think the problem of this type of topic in the high school boils down to authority. Ideally, we'd want students to be able to listen to biased information and filter it to find the truth. However, this would mean telling them that the teacher isn't always right; something that I didn't realize until college. Telling them that the teacher isn't always right leads to authority problems, and with teachers being responsible for classes of 30 students (sometimes more, rarely less), the last thing that they want is even the chance of students not respecting their authority in any respect.

Guitar + Ferret = Oops

I got an email from a guy who had been to my website (the one that I can't access, because someone changed my Yahoo password, and apparently I gave them a fake birthdate when I was a kid...oops...), asking me for the chords to The Fisherman's Song. I suspect that I'd worked out chords for it before, but I couldn't remember. Also, my entire binder of sheet music disappeared the last time that I moved with a bunch of other stuff, suggesting that a whole box went missing. Anyway, I pulled out a guitar, something that I hadn't done for months, and certainly not since having the ferrets.

While I was trying to tune the guitar, Chaos kept trying to sniff it, but finally got bored and went to eat. When I started playing, he climbed up on the chair and tried to sniff it. I'm not sure what happened, but he jumped back really quickly and fell to the floor. I suspect that he got his nose buzzed on the strings. Oops. That'll learn 'im.

If anyone is interested in the chords to The Fisherman's Song, they are:

Em D G Am
Em G Am
Em D G Am
Em G Am Em

German "Apples to Apples" game!!!

The Apples to Apples game has just been released in German! I've got myself a copy of Äpfel zu Äpfeln ordered from Germany!

Dad is home from the hospital

Dad came home on Tuesday night. He was in again this morning for tests. He's less than comfortable at the moment, but the doctors don't seem too concerned. Hopefully he'll get better soon.

catch and release and other fishing related topics

Letting Fuzzball down after taking her out of the cage reminds me of releasing a fish or other aquatic animal back into the water. One second she's there in your hands, the next she's gone. When you put Chaos down, he just kinda hangs out for a second until he wakes up, and then he ambles away.

I've found that fishing for ferrets is a fun game to play with Chaos. If I dangle the little leather braided leash handle over him and make it jump, he tries to grab it with his paws and his teeth. Once he gets a good grip on it with his teeth, he can remain dangling in the air for a good 30 seconds, which apparently isn't long enough for my camera to wake up and focus. Not surprisingly, Fuzzball is off in her own little world in this respect too. While Chaos goes wild, Fuzzball just ignores it as if she didn't even know it was there.

Here are some random fuzzy photos for your amusement.

fact vs fiction

Some researchers in England are trying to profit from THE DA VINCI CODE.

I am of the opinion that anything published in a non-fiction context is considered research and is protected by copyright in the context of non-fiction. However, using a concept of "science" or "history" in a work of fiction should not be, and as far as I am aware is not, restricted by law anywhere.

Imagine if I decided to write a work of fiction (i.e. a novel) about the "Hobbits" from Indonesia. (Yeah...it will never happen, but just imagine!) Would the researchers who discovered the archeological remains have any claim to any revenues generated by my book? No, I don't think so.

Keep it straight, folks. Fact or fiction (or at least fiction or non-fiction).

progress with Fuzzball?

Yesterday I was holding Fuzzball and she bit me on the cheek. This was the first 'oral' contact from her in a long time. When I first met her, she would lick you three times on the cheek and the bite. The last few months, she's not licked or kissed in any way except for when I had FerreTone or olive oil on me. Last night, she didn't lick at all; just bit.

This morning, I gave her her medicine and held her for a bit and she actually licked me on the cheek without biting. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe she's deciding that it's not horrible to be held afterall. Or maybe it was a fluke. We'll see.

Why on earth would anyone be a historical linguist??? - or - Why would anyone pay anyone else to be a historical linguist?

Being a student of linguistics, but the child of a blue-collar worker and a psychologist, I am often torn between academics and practicality. Linguistics. Who cares? Especially historical linguistics (an interest of mine, but not my focus). Sure, it can be fun and interesting, but so can laying back on the grass watching clouds go by; no one wants to pony up any money to pay someone to do that!

Myself, I'm what's called an applied linguist. That means that we take the theoretical and make it practical. In particular, I am interested in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). My goal is to understand languages and the way that we learn them in a way that will help us find the most efficient and enjoyable ways to learn them. I can deal with that. It's got a practical application.

Other applied linguists work on such projects as language recognition programs for computers. They're the people who have you to thank for all those automated menus that let you talk and not just punch in numbers when you call in to customer service. (For better or for worse!)

Synchronic linguists work on mapping language in terms of syntax, morphology, phonology and other structural stuff. Said linguists try to establish models of language that applied linguists often make use of. So, OK, we can keep the synchronic linguists as useful, even though their work is primarily theoretical.

Then there are historical (diachronic) linguists. History of language. Did Latin American Spanish come from the dialect of Andaluz and do we care? I've struggled with the practicality of historical linguistics, but I've found a few reasons why they are worth while. First off, if you want to read historical documents, you need to be able to read the language that they were written in. That's pretty practical. Second, through historical linguistics, we can see what kinds of changes languages are capable of going through/producing and so we can use them to do a reality check on the work of synchronic linguistic models.

Another branch of linguistics also deserves mention. This is sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics applies linguistics to real people and real situations. It looks at questions of social interaction. For example, a sociolinguist might deal with the question of which English speakers get subtitled (often the black guy and not the white guy, even if the black guy's dialect is equally understandable). Also, sociolinguists can look at linguistic politics. What's the deal with English Only? Is it a good idea? What are its motivations? What are its potential ramifications? This brings us back to applied linguistics in SLA. How well/quickly can one reasonably expect an immigrant to learn a new language?

So, yes, linguists do stuff outside of the theoretical realm that can justify a paycheck. I'm still working on finding a practical reason for Literary Studies, though.

Another strange dream

Well, the advantage to not sleeping well is that your mind produces rather interesting dreams and you can remember them even after you've woken up, though the details fade rather quickly.

Last night, I dreamt that I was visiting a family in Bolivia, but it was an American house and the surrounding area was much more like Germany than anywhere I've been in South America! I remember asking the Bolivian hostess, Teresa, to be able to borrow the cellphone that I had mailed to her. She lent it to me, and I saw that I needed to get a new calling card for it. Then I went out to find my friend, Claudia, a German woman who hasn't answered any of my emails for over a year now, leading me to wonder if I can really still consider her a friend. I was walking through some sort of shopping area, though whether it was a German shopping street or an American style mall, I couldn't say with any certainty. Anyway, I saw Claudia. She had cut her long red hair, but it still made her recognizable. I followed her into a lecturehall and got her attention. She was overjoyed to see me. We went out and talked and hugged and stuff. It was great.

Then the dream shifted. I was back at my hostess's house and my parents were there visiting. We decided to go driving and one of my parents was behind the wheel. We drove into a blend between a Bolivian and a German city center, the more German the closer to the center we got. I was playing the tour guide for my folks. Then we stopped at a store. It was some sort of grocery store, I think. It wasn't really American, but not really German either. They didn't require a deposit for the shopping carts. After walking in past the registers, it became more of an open-air market with a lot of different stands and stalls. It looked more Bolivian, but it was German language. We went into a jewelry shop and were looking at the wares. I decided to buy a necklace for my mom, but since she was there, I tried to conduct the transaction in German. However, the German speaking shop keeper kept trying to do it in English. There were a few people behind the counter. Mom decided to buy something with a $50 bill. Then, for some reason, we needed to borrow something from a shop, a pencil or a cart or something, and they demanded a $200 deposit. Mama gave them the deposit, used whatever it was and got her deposit back. At the checkout at the front of the 'store', I was paying for everything using Mom's money. When I pulled the bills out of the wallet, though, two $100 bills were fake. We went back to the stall that had demanded the deposit and found that one of the shopkeepers was dead. He had taken our real money and given us fake money in return. The other shopkeepers were shocked to find our two $100 bills in the dead man's money box and they returned them to us.

This time when I was out and about, I saw Claudia again, however this time she ran away from me. Very sad, really.

German assignments should be given in English, I guess

I gave my students surveys to get their input on the class. Here's a quote from one:

What would you like to see done differently?

"I often get confused about homework we are expected to do and the due date. It would be helpful if the assignments were given in English as well."

I don't know...I think that assignments given in German by the 2nd month of class should be OK, considering that it's essentially the same thing every week. And heaven forbid that the student email me with questions about the assignments...

The squeaky-toy...slowly but surely...

Well, Chaos has long been a convert to the cult of the squeaky-toy. Fuzzball, however, has consistently ignored it...until today. Today, she is starting to realize that running to the squeaky-toy means getting a treat....she just takes the long way around to get there. Hopefully she'll figure it out soon and come running as quickly as Chaos. He's to the point of coming from just about anywhere in the apartment. She's more easily distracted/diverted.

Those poor conservative Catholics (this is not against mainstream Catholics)...

Opus Dei wants changes to The Da Vinci Code

I read in the above linked article that Opus Dei wants the movie to be "changed so that “there aren't references that would hurt Catholics.”"

The following argument isn't very coherant, but I hope it communicates how I feel about this in some sort of meaningful way.

Give me a break! Since when has anyone ever cared about hurting anyone else??? I see Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses portrayed badly all the time. Has anyone looked at the portrayal of the 'stupid Black Southern Baptist' lately? How about Shamanism? Should I even mention popular media's portrayal of Islam?

High ups in the Catholic Church have been given rather sinister portrayals for quite some time, however, with items such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and collaboration with Hitler, I think the Church might deserve some of that. I've seen a number of works of fiction portraying Opus Dei and other groups in the Church as ...how to say this... viciously zealous in the service of the Church interests, even if these interests don't serve individuals or the world at large. I don't recall this kind of offensive on other such films and books.

Any time that you have a highly verticalized organization, be it a government, corporation or a church, it is open to corruption and evil. People are going to talk about it. Sorry!

I think that Opus Dei should just grin and bear it, unless they choose to actually demonstrate that the portrayal is completely false.

Dad's still in the hospital

As some of you know, my dad has been in the hospital since Monday. He went in with an intestinal infection and out of control diabetes. They've gotten his blood sugar under control and have found an inflammation in the duodenum. They say that it should be treatable with medicine and diet. Dad is still looking for an operation, but hopefully it won't come to that.

Rabbit down!

At approximately 11:55 this morning, a rabbit was found with suspicious saliva spots on him. A suspicious character was seen leaving the scene of the crime...

Because once is never enough...

I occasionally clean with vinegar. Anyway, I had left a dish of white vinegar on the floor. Chaos went over and sniffed at it. He didn't seem too sure about it, but then he decided to flip it over, so he drug it across the floor and finally managed to up-end it. Of course the little dear poured vinegar all over himself. That was pretty funny. Funnier, though, was when he sniffed at the vinegar on the floor, and then tipped the dish again, getting more vinegar on himself! I was laughing so hard, that I decided to call home to tell the folks about it. While I was on the phone with my brother, Ratboy did it again...and seemed surprised at the less than pleasant result!

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time!






In related news, Ratboy hasn't been chewing on the tape at the bottom of the oven since I put chili sauce on it. (The vinegar was good as long as it was wet, but then it would evaporate, and he'd be back to chewing on the tape. Cayanne pepper sauce coats!)

Sugar doesn't make kids hyper

Well, 20/20 just told me that it isn't the sugar that makes kids hyper, but rather the situations that they're in. For example, if they're playing with their friends, they get high on life from stimulation from the other children.

Here's the abstract from the article that they cited:

M. L. Wolraich; D. B. Wilson; J. W. White
The effect of sugar on behavior or cognition in children. A meta-analysis
JAMA, Nov 1995; 274: 1617 - 1621.

The effect of sugar on behavior or cognition in children. A meta-analysis
M. L. Wolraich, D. B. Wilson and J. W. White Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University Child-Development Center, Nashville, TN 37232-3573, USA.

OBJECTIVE--To examine the effects of sugar on the behavior or cognition of children by using meta-analytic techniques on reported studies.

DATA SOURCES--Studies were identified through a literature search of the MEDLINE and PsychINFO databases and the authors' files using sugar, sucrose, and attention deficit disorder as the search terms.

STUDY SELECTION--Studies were required to (1) intervene by having the subjects consume a known quantity of sugar, (2) use a placebo (artificial sweetener) condition (3) blind the subjects, parents, and research staff to the conditions; and (4) report statistics that could be used to compute the dependent measures effect sizes.

DATA EXTRACTION--Variables included publication year, study setting, subject type and number, gender, age, sugar and placebo type and dose, prior dietary condition, measurement construct, means and SDs for the sugar and placebo conditions, and direction of effect. DATA

SYNTHESIS--Sixteen reports met the inclusion criteria for a total of 23 within-subject design studies. The weighted mean effect size and related statistics for each of the 14 measurement constructs revealed that although the range for these means was from -0.14 for direct observations and up to +0.30 for academic tests, the 95% confidence interval for all 14 mean effect sizes included 0.

CONCLUSION--The meta-analytic synthesis of the studies to date found that sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children. The strong belief of parents may be due to expectancy and common association. However, a small effect of sugar or effects on subsets of children cannot be ruled out.

Fuzzies playing

I got some pictures of the ferrets wrestling. I also have some pictures of Rat Boy tearing through my stuffed animales.


































This is Chaos meeting Raccy, my stuffed raccoon that I've had since it was bigger than I was.




































This is the stuffed elephant that Chaos has pulled off of the shelf behind the couch and left on the couch.

Ratboy loves tape.

I had to tape off the front of the oven by the floor, because Fuzzball ran underneath there the very first day that I had her here. Since then I've been fighting with Chaos. He loves chewing on tape. Today I finally had an idea that I think will help solve the problem. I rubbed vinegar on the tape. He doesn't much care for vinegar. Hopefully, he'll leave it alone now. Of course, I'll have to re-apply the vinegar anytime that he decides that it would be fun to chew on the tape again.

Week 5 of the semester...

So, I'm teaching German 101 at LMRU (Large Midwestern Research University). Since we are technically limited to 3000 photocopies per semester, I send most of my students' homework assignments per Email. Last week, at the end of week 4, I still had students asking "What assignment? Is that what was in that Email?" Get a clue! Yes. That's what that email with the subject line of "German101: Homework" was all about!

*grumbles*

I guess I can't complain too much. Most of my students are getting As and no one is failing.

I did have to lay down the law on late assignments, though. Usually it doesn't much matter for me whether I get an assignment turned in one day or the next, but when I get assignments from the previous week or even two weeks ago, that's kinda annoying. It's even worse if it's something that I actually have to read and correct (as opposed to listening lab stuff that I just mark done or not done). There's nothing like the feeling of getting to the bottom of a stack of 15-20 student essays and being done, fertig, terminada, klaar, fini...and then getting another one turned in a day or two later. So, I've told the students that any late work will only receive half credit.

Note: If I assign verb drills to be done before the grammar test, then maybe it would be beneficial to do the verb drills before the grammar test. Practice making perfect and all. It really burns me to see students with blank sheets...and then they wonder why their grades suffer.

That's a good thing...if they choose to not do the work, their grade will usually suffer anyway on test day. Then I don't have to feel bad about it.

I like teaching, but it's annoying as a teacher to have slacker students. On the other hand, I tend to be a slacker student, so I can see both perspectives.

new ferret stuff

I read in my ferret training book that a squeaky toy was the key for getting a ferret to come running from anywhere anytime. So, yesterday James (my neighbor from across the hall) and I took the little dears to the pet store to pick out a squeaky toy, per the book's advice, to make sure that they would respond to the particular squeaker. Well, Chaos responded to EVERYTHING. Fuzzball, ignored everything. So, if I need Chaos, all I have to do is squeak the squeaky toy. Fuzzball keeps playing in her plastic bag.


While at the store, I found this lovely 1970s colored cat bed, that looked ferret friendly. I let the kids try it out and they seemed to like it, so I took it home. Fuzzball likes it. Chaos still prefers the carrier.