Vox Popoli

A former public school teacher writes:

Picture “advanced placement” 4th, 7th, or even 8th graders who do not know their addition tables, or the names (much less the sounds) of the vowels.

I not so long ago looked into some federal funds for pre-school reading programs under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. I was initially optimistic, as I had had excellent recent success getting three and four-year-olds reading fluidly (as high as the upper middle school level, in terms of proficiency). On inspection of the grant offer materials, I found I did not qualify – for the simple reason that the government “absolutely” did not encourage the teaching of actual reading to pre-schoolers. Recognition of the letters of the alphabet was the maximum acceptable.

If you are considering sending your kids to government schools (or have some there already), be advised that the above account accurately describes such schools. The only variance pertains to the “chatted, argued, screamed…” passage. That state of affairs, you see, exists only in those classrooms whose misguided adult patrons attempt to actually be teachers. Administrators take care of such infidels in short order – by making it crystal clear to these poor souls’ pupils that they (the administrators) do not support them (the poor souls). By now, most classroom managers are compliant in their expected roles as social directors, abdicating these roles just long enough to cover the pretentious, perfunctory pablum required on today’s standardized tests. Such classrooms are uniformly harmonious most of the time.

You do not have to accept that there is an organized conspiracy to keep our kids ignorant to get the picture. As long as you realize that things are exactly as they would be if there were such a conspiracy, that will suffice.

There are a number of assumptions that a parent foolish enough to put his child into the government schools must make in order to do so:

1) I turned out okay, therefore my child will be fine. This is based on the assumption that nothing in the school system has changed significantly in the quarter-century since you were in first grade. This is false.

2) The purpose of a school is to teach reading, writing and math. This, too, is false. Not only do the actions of most educational institutions belie this assumption, but often their charters, slogans and policies state outright that this is not the case.

3) My child’s teachers care about my child’s education. Of course they pretend to care, but does one really expect a teacher to publicly proclaim his true indifference? The average teacher doesn’t care any more about how much the children in his class learn than the average office worker cares about his job. I don’t know about you, but based on my office experience, that’s a pretty high level of apathy. The testimony of this teacher and other former teachers like John Gatto certainly appears to support this line of reasoning.

While I must state that I have never experienced anything like the incident to which I alluded earlier. I am not without some experience of the martial homoerotism that is the sport of Rugby. After my 100 meter career ended with a series of blown hamstrings, I played a season of wingback for one of the top collegiate teams in the country.

I never really figured out all the rules, since as a wing, my only responsibility was to a) tackle the other wing if he had the ball, and b) run to touch and try to avoid the other wing if I had the ball. Simple enough.

However, I achieved some measure of distinction in my brief career as a rugger by being kicked out of my first game. I was quite shocked, having been led to believe that all was fair in love, war and rugby. What happened was that our fullback punted the ball high and deep, giving me about a forty-yard run at the Penn State winger, so I was at full-speed when I hit him shoulder-to-chest just as the ball arrived. I was about 75 percent sure I’d killed him and the crowd was going wild as our scrum had managed to come up with the ball, so I did a few repetitions of the shovel-of-dirt-over the shoulder thing, followed by firing off a few rounds in the air from a pair of imaginary six-shooters. And yes, I was prancing.

The crowd went completely berserk – we were playing at home – and the referee promptly threw me out of the game for excessive celebration. It was probably just as well, as I’m pretty sure the Nittany Lions were gunning for me after that. And on the plus side, it did cement my place on the team, which had been pretty iffy up to that point.

Waterboy proves to be a sucker for NFL propaganda:

Were the France-England numbers worldwide? The quote for the Super Bowl number indicates they were for the US only; do you have the worldwide estimate? Besides ex-pats and military, there is a growing following in Europe.

From the NFL: “Super Bowl XXXVII TV audience: Last year’s game was the most watched program ever with 138.9 million viewers. The 10 most-watched programs in TV history are all Super Bowls.” The NFL-Europe estimate for World Bowl XII: “World Bowl XII will reach an estimated worldwide television audience of 200 million in more than 150 [countries].”

France-England was also one of the bigger marquee games. What were the numbers for the final?

First, to correct a few misconceptions. The France-England game only featured one marquee team in TV terms, as contrary to what I would have imagined, England, Germany and Portugal were the the biggest TV draws in Euro 2004. The source for the 118 million watching the England-Portugal game was Initiative, a Nielsen-type company which tracks 52 markets. This is probably NOT a worldwide number, as UEFA has 50 members and Latvia was mentioned as one of the markets tracked. The numbers for the final are not yet available, but based on the quarterfinal numbers, Initiative predicted it would hit 150 million.

The NFL numbers are downright laughable, as I doubt that even two million people watched the World Bowl. You’ll note that the NFL says the broadcast “would reach” 200 million, which is more than the global viewers it claims for the Super Bowl. Even this latter number is questionable, as Nielson reports the following:

In 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders for their first Super Bowl victory averaging a 40.7 rating with 88.6 million viewers in the U.S. Worldwide the game averaged more than 97 million viewers in 22 countries.

That’s eight million more viewers with the addition of 21 countries, presumably the biggest and most important additional audiences since Nielsen is bothering to track them. That’s 380,000 viewers per additional country. And we’re supposed to believe that the other 178 countries in which the game is being televised, which aren’t important enough to be tracked, are averaging the minimum of 236,000 viewers necessary to bring the total to the claimed 139 million?

In direct country-by-country comparison, it’s easy to see that Euro 2004 games – not including the final – commanded much larger percentage of viewers in the countries involved. Furthermore, neutral viewership tended to run about half of those in the two countries involved. This is significant since the EU – which, keep in mind, is smaller than UEFA, has 380 million people to the USA’s 293.

Euro 2004

Britain: ENGLAND v PORTUGAL 24.7M/59.8M = 41.3 percent

Holland: HOLLAND v LATVIA 7.6M/15.9M = 47.8 percent

USA: NEW ENGLAND vs CAROLINA 89.6M/293M = 30.6 percent

This shows that not only the quarterfinals, but even group stage games involving minor countries were of serious interest. In 2004, viewership was up 14 percent overall, compared to the increase of 1.3 percent from the 2000 to 2004 Super Bowls. In both 2000 and 2004, neutral viewership was somewhat more than half that of the two nations involved, but still extraordinarily high.

Euro 2000 final (France v Italy)

France 21.4M/ 59.3M = 36.1 percent

Italy 21.3M / 57.7M = 36.9 percent

Germany 18.4M / 83.2M = 22.1 percent

So, one can safely conclude that EU-wide, (which does not count large extra-EU UEFA countries such as Russia and the Ukraine), the average Euro game has viewership comparable to the Super Bowl even if one leaves out the larger-than-average viewership contributed by the two nations involved. As for the big games like the semis and final, there is simply no comparison. Taking the tournament as a whole, it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that the Super Bowl and the NFL playoffs are relatively small fish by comparison.

118 million people tuned in to the first-round France-England match, which was decided in the final minutes. That figure trounces the 89 million-person American audience for the Super Bowl last year, which was the biggest television event of 2003; and the 90 million for the Super Bowl this year, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.

Not only is the Euro 2004 tournament bigger than the Super Bowl, but nearly every game of the 31 involved blows it away in the ratings. In Holland, for example, the semifinal match with Portugal scored a 50 share – half of all televisions in the country were tuned to the game. Unlike American sports, there’s no need to schedule around things, instead, everything else is scheduled around it.

Now, there are no bigger fans of the NFL than me. I’m such an old school purist that I’m still irritated about the 16-game schedule since it messed up all the old records. (Although, I admit, it’s hard to deny that a longer season = more football, which is an obviously good thing.) But to be honest, the disdain that some football fans show for the Beautiful Game strikes me as a weird combination of ignorance and insecurity.

To a connoisseur of both sports, the two are perfectly complimentary. The latter half of the league seasons and the international tournaments are in the NFL offseason, and whereas the NFL is the ultimate game of pre-plotted cerebral strategy, soccer is the pinnacle of impromptu creativity. I simply laugh when I hear Philistines of either continent dismissing the other continent’s favorite sport; such poorly founded contempt reveals nothing but the ironic snobbery of the ill-informed parochial. For every American sneering about low scores and Nancy boys, there is a European scoffing at martial homoeroticism and interminable breaks in the action.

A pox, I say, a pox on both houses.

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised to hear that it’s Edwards. Why? Because John Kerry likes a mate with money. Heck, if Theresa goes bust in the upcoming bear market, we may well see John ditch her in favor of a Massachusetts Matrimonial with John-Boy.

The best news is that this should finish off any real threat of the Lizard Queen running for President. If Bush wins, Edwards will become the presumptive Democratic nominee. And if Kerry wins, well, Hillary’s potential presidency is deader than a twice-staked vampire.

Finishing off Hillary, hmmmm, that alone might be reason to vote for Kerry… oh, relax, will you? I’m kidding!

The OC writes:

This morning’s P_Press carried another editorial decrying the small-mindedness of those who refuse to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Since I have the fullest confidence that they will ignore my rebuttal, I’m copying you on it.

Dear Sirs/Ms,

I already know that I hate okra, therefore I feel no need to go to a restaurant and spend $8 on some new okra dish just to see if it tastes different this time. Likewise, having seen Michael Moore’s earlier films, I have every reason to expect that “Fahrenheit 9/11” will be just another revolting load of dishonest leftist agitprop.

The genius of film is that it is a highly emotive medium with a very fast information decay rate. A skilled filmmaker can use emotion, energy, and rapid non-sequitur cuts to leap over yawning chasms in logic and sense that would, if presented in print, cause the reader to stop short, sit up, and say, “What the hell is this idiot trying to say?”

Moore has already demonstrated that he is a highly skilled filmmaker, on the order of Leni Reifenstahl. But surely, by now, Moore and his distributors have recouped the cost of producing and distributing this film. If Moore is genuinely interested in promoting public discussion of the charges he makes in it, then let him donate the broadcast rights to PBS so that we can all see it for free and make up our own minds.

Until he does so, though, I feel no need to spend $8 from my entertainment budget to watch Michael “Barnum” Moore’s latest carnival geek act.

One of the biggest headaches with Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 2 is the cretinous way it handles PCMCIA wireless cards. I managed to get this machine working somehow, but never quite got the other one going despite numerous attempts… until finally the thing died thanks to Dell’s quality motherboards.

So, I can’t test this fix out, at least not until I get my next machine, but based on the responses on the Fedora forum it appears to finally have done the trick.

Open /etc/init.d/pcmcia

Change the line

# chkconfig: 2345 24 96

to

# chkconfig: 2345 09 96

Yes, it’s in a comment, but it seems it has meaning to the chkconfig command (chkconfig –level 2345 pcmcia reset)

What the fix appears to do is to load PCMCIA before the network instead of after it, as Fedora stupidly insists on doing by default. Obviously, the network cannot work if the drivers for the hardware upon which it rests is not yet loaded. This would seem to indicate that no one on the development team has a laptop with wireless PCMCIA, or Fedora would never have shipped the first time with this problem, let alone the second. Well, that’s the hazard of using an Open Source OS; the good news is that now that the problem has finally been identified, it will be addressed in the next OS release.

Factual error: When Spider-man is fighting with Doc Ock and Doc Ock throws Spider-man through the overhead pedestrian bridge, Doc Ock throws Spider-man in the direction of travel of the train, and when passing through the bridge, Spider-man doesn’t touch anything. When Spider-man comes out the other side, he is ‘behind’ Doc Ock (in terms of the direction of train travel). This implies that Spider-man has slowed down in the air – fair enough due to wind resistance – and so is traveling slower. However, Spider-man then hits Doc Ock, which implies he is now traveling faster. A physical impossibility (since the horizontal speed doesn’t increase and decrease when thrown, only the vertical speed).

I have to confess, I’m one of those people who gets extremely annoyed when there are obvious plot holes. As one SF writer once said, any story that depends on someone being completely stupid shouldn’t even be considered a story. This doesn’t apply to the new Spiderman movie, necessarily, but this particular error makes me wonder if minor physics errors are one of the reasons that CGI action scenes often look noticeably wrong, even to those of us who couldn’t work out the proper physics with a gun to our head.

Seeing Enemy at the Gates with a Force Recon sniper was a riot. He was physically squirming in his chair with the effort to keep his mouth shut during the movie. Afterwards, we went out for pizza and the girls did their best to ignore us while he went on a 30-minute rampage of the film’s collection of absurdities. Good humor.

Vittorio writes:

Purtroppo, il popolo ha sempre giudicato dalle apparenze; lo fece anche Adamo quando mangiò la mela. D’altronde, qualcuno, credo Rivarol, disse che una dittatura si afferma non per merito proprio ma per gli errori della democrazia. A proposito, visto Portogallo-Grecia? Indubbiamente i Portoghesi hanno commessogravi errori, ma i Greci, che catenaccio!

Certainly the essay of Quintus Tullius suggests that people have always been prone to judge by appearances, although this may have briefly been less of a factor in the days when politics were no longer local but prior to television. And regardless of what a dictatorship affirms about democracy, there can be little question that, based on historical precedent, it is what inevitably follows. This will be true of the American Republic as well, the only question is when and in what form.

And of course, I did see the game. Portugal blundered by their determination to probe and search for nonexistent cracks in the Greek defense instead of trying to break through it by main force. Typical of most midfield-driven teams, they wasted chance after chance by holding the ball too long and allowing the defense to get set.

Greece’s victory is a great Cinderella story – Mississippi State had better odds to win the NCAA basketball tournament prior to the start of the season – but Rehhagel’s revival of il catenaccio may not be a great development for the game. I much prefer the wide-open attacking play of Arsenal and Real Madrid; it would certainly be more entertaining to see teams imitating the Czech Republic instead of the Greeks in the coming years.

Then again, Trappatoni’s use of the Blue Chain backfired badly on Italy and the Greeks were as disciplined in attack as they were in defense, so perhaps we won’t see an unwanted return to the tactics of the past.

I’ve never paid much attention to the oft-cited “it’s the law” argument. As the Gargler pointed out recently, that point is only raised when it’s deemed in the interest of the politicians and bureaucrats to do something that people don’t want them to do or when they wish to compel unthinking obedience. Jaywalking is almost never prosecuted, although “it’s the law”, and businesses freely do business on Sundays in many states in open and accepted defiance the blue laws still on the books.

As the Constitution is now a dead letter in the eyes of the government and the law no longer stands as written but is superceded by judge-declared case law – otherwise known as the Rule of Man that the Rule of Law was supposed to supplant – it’s clear that there is no law. Although few realize it yet, we now live in a Maughamite environment of “do what thou wilt with due regard for the policeman around the corner” and should expect the concomitant results in the near term.

People tend to forget that no one relies so heavily on “it’s the law” as a corrupt political leadership:

China’s state-controlled media have not reported Jiang’s detention, which began June 1. In response to questions submitted by The Washington Post, the government said in a brief statement: “Jiang Yanyong, as a soldier, recently violated the relevant discipline of the military. Based on relevant regulations, the military has been helping and educating him.” Though Chinese police routinely jail dissidents, the decision to detain Jiang appears to have been made by the Central Military Commission, the nation’s supreme military body, with the consent of the party’s most senior leaders, including President Hu Jintao and his influential predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to a source familiar with the decision-making process.

Jiang Yanyong, a 72-year old doctor and “soldier” clearly broke the law in alerting the world to the Chinese cover-up of SARS. Is it right or just for him to be locked away and re-educated? After all, “it’s the law.”