A repeated lie

It's okay if it's for Jesus

The Institute for Creation Research likes to honor its founder, the late Henry M. Morris, by reprinting his articles in Acts & Facts magazine. The April 2011 issue recycles Morris's essay on “Defending the Faith.” According to the tag at the end, the article was originally published in January 1997. I presume the following paragraph was carried over intact from Morris's initial version:

The excellent book Of Pandas and People was written to present biology in terms of “intelligent design,” without any reference to God, the Bible, or creation, hoping that it could be adopted as a high school biology textbook. Again, nothing doing! It was merely a sneaky way of getting creationism into the schools, said its opponents, and they won.

How closely must one have followed the creation/evolution argument to laugh at Morris's claim? Anyone who has paid even a modicum of attention to the attempts by creationists to subvert public school science is aware that Pandas and People was not written as a intelligent design textbook. The original manuscripts conclusively demonstrated that “in the beginning” it was overtly a creation-science book. This was amusingly revealed during the Kitzmiller trial, when the search-and-replace revision of the manuscript was shown to have produced “cdesign proponentsists” as the undeniable intermediate form between creationists and intelligent design advocates.

We can try to be charitable about Morris's blatant mischaracterization of Pandas and People. It's possible that he took the published 1989 ID-based edition at face value and was innocently unaware of the book's true origins. It is not, after all, an ICR publication. However, what excuse does ICR have for republishing Morris's misrepresentation—deliberate or not—in 2011? Kitzmiller occurred in 2005. The current editorial staff at Acts & Facts has had more than five years to absorb its lesson. Nevertheless, they reprinted “Defending the Faith” without so much as a footnote to indicate that Morris was mistaken about Pandas and People. A decent respect by Christians for their own cherished scriptures should prompt them to pay attention to the injunction against bearing false witness.

They have no excuse.

A failure to communicate

She said ≠ She heard

My colleague and I were making light conversation in the faculty room as we checked our mail-boxes.

“I see you have a clique of my former prealgebra students in your compressed algebra class,” Professor Turin observed. “I saw them hanging together before your class.”

“Oh, were they yours last semester? Most of them are doing pretty well,”

“I'm not surprised,” she said. Then she hesitated. “But how is Kara doing?”

I sighed.

“Poor Kara. Not well. The pace of the class has her quite stressed and she makes lots of mistakes. She really should have picked a more regular schedule.”

“That is exactly what I told her,” said Turin. “She was keen to take your class because of the compressed schedule and I warned her that it was a bad fit. She freaked out several times during my prealgebra and it was always about her fear of falling behind. I wish she had listened to me and enrolled in a regular section.”

“Yeah, well, what can you do?”

It was less than a week later that Kara read the handwriting on the wall and visited my office hour to inform me that she was cutting her losses and dropping my compressed algebra class.

“I could really use the time better on my other courses, Dr. Z. The class goes too fast and it's hard to understand.”

“That's a perfectly reasonable decision, Kara. It's important to make the best use of your time. You should do better next semester in a regular section of algebra.” I paused before asking her a question. “Did you talk to your prealgebra instructor before enrolling in my class?”

I deliberately did not mention my colleague's name or otherwise indicate that I had already discussed the matter with her. Kara brightened up immediately.

“Oh, yeah! I did! Turin said I could definitely do well in your class. She said I was all ready for it, but I guess things just didn't quite work out as we had expected.”

My eyebrows wanted to go up and my eyeballs wanted to bulge out, but I think I managed to control my facial features and maintain a mien of serenity.

“Well, yes, Kara. Things didn't work out this time. Better luck next time.”

After Kara left my office, I stalked the hallways looking for my colleague. Turin was in her office. I recounted my conversation with her former student. She was dumbfounded.

“That doesn't sound anything like the conversation we had. I tried really hard to warn her she was making a mistake!”

We considered the matter for a while. Clearly Kara had a ferociously effective data filter that allowed only good news to impinge on her consciousness. Since it is Professor Turin's nature to be encouraging and as positive as possible, I was certain she had sprinkled her cautions with snippets of praise that had been the only things Kara had heard. Eventually, Turin reconstructed her comments and we identified Kara's post-production editing.

What Turin said:

“You're a good prealgebra student, Kara, but Dr. Z's compressed algebra class would be a tough challenge. I'm certain a regular algebra class would be perfect for you.”

What Kara heard:

“You're a good prealgebra student, Kara, but Dr. Z's compressed algebra class would be a tough challenge. I'm certain a regular algebra class would be perfect for you.”

There's no simple cure for this. Certainly Turin isn't suddenly going to stop offering her students positive feedback, even if only as mitigating factors in a negative review. Equally certainly, Kara is not going to stop selectively hearing what she wants to hear. I fear the set of solutions may be the empty set.

Publish and perish?

Wisconsin GOP channels Joe McCarthy

There's this history professor back at the University of Wisconsin, ensconced in an endowed chair at the Madison campus. He decided it would be nice to start a modest little blog. He even had a catchy title: “Scholar as Citizen.” You can already see that it was a fail-safe proposition. Soon the hit-meter would be recording Internet traffic on a gargantuan scale. No doubt.

He posted his first blog entry on March 15, not even a couple of weeks ago. Its title was as irresistible as the name of his blog: Who's Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (I've probably lost you now; the title is so seductive you've certainly already clicked on the link.) The inevitable happened: over half a million hits in a handful of days.

I am so jealous.

But I don't envy what happened next. The Wisconsin Republican Party decided that UW Madison's Bill Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies, is a dangerous radical who must immediately be stifled into silence—even, ideally, hounded from academia. The state GOP filed an open-records request with UW demanding access to Professor Cronon's e-mail, hoping to find something embarrassing if allowed to root through his archives. (Remember, a handful of words in a private e-mail can be inflated into an international scandal if ideologues are willing to clutch their pearls and shriek in affected outrage; the ginned-up “Climategate” furor proved that.)

Cronon has published his own detailed commentary on the Republican fishing expedition, correctly pointing out its McCarthyist antecedents and winkling out the purely political motivations of the GOP's incipient smear campaign by closely reading the text of the Republicans' open-records request. He declines to be intimidated.

Smart ALEC

Cronon's greatest sin appears to have been his discussion of the American Legislative Exchange Council. What, you've never heard of ALEC? As Cronon pointed out in his original post, ALEC much prefers to lurk in the background. Its on-line archive of “model legislation” is not open to the public and membership in ALEC is strictly controlled. (Are you a right-wing elected official or a deep-pockets teabagger with money to contribute? Come on down!)

ALEC drafts legislation which Republicans are wont to introduce in their various state legislatures, pulling ready-made extremist boilerplate off the ALEC shelf to add to their bill drafts. It's like “writing” a term paper by downloading an Internet document, except that technically it's not plagiarism. ALEC is eager for legislators to attempt to enact the components of its political program.

While ALEC tries to hide in the shadows, its influence on public policy is potentially revealed whenever its model legislation is actually published as a legislator's introduced bill. Cronon was rude enough to connect the dots and expose ALEC's influence in recent Republican legislation, especially in Wisconsin. But ALEC's close-mouthed membership and blocked website prevent the average citizen from peeking at the man behind the curtain. What else might these right-wing ideologues have in store for us? How can we find out? Must we wait till the legislation actually appears?

I may be able to help a little. You see, I have a copy of ALEC's Source Book of American State Legislation. It's in the form of a small paperback that I glommed onto while working as a legislative aide in Sacramento, where some ALEC-friendly Republicans were pushing draconian tax-cutting measures like the infamous Proposition 13 and the subsequent (and lesser-known because it failed) Proposition 9. I no longer recall precisely how I acquired it (my boss was hardly likely to have been one of ALEC's favorites), but I suspect I picked it up out of curiosity from the discard pile outside a Republican legislator's office and decided to keep it.

The book begins by offering a bogus quote from Abraham Lincoln, the long-since refuted litany that begins, “You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.” Perhaps it's significant that ALEC's book opens with a hoax, especially given the hollow-shell justifications of Republican politicians who claim that collective bargaining must die if workers are to prosper. I presume they will soon introduce measures to establish more prisons and workhouses to manage the poor.

Is the old ALEC paperback out-of-date and of little use to us today? I think not. Although it carries a publication date of 1980, the 92-page booklet is oracular in its contents. The nutcase wet-dreams of yesteryear are the standard policy planks of today's teabagger politicians. Here, for your edification, is a sampler of the Source Book's list of model legislation. The headings are from the booklet and the descriptions are excerpted from the actual text. A few may seem like motherhood and apple pie (both of which, come to think of it, are now more controversial than they used to be), but there are some real nuggets of crazy in here. The first item is especially pertinent (complete with Wisconsin reference!).

Controlling the Bureaucracy

Public Services Protection Act. The suggested Public Services Protection Act prohibits contractual agreements between all governmental subdivisions of the state and any public employee union or association. This prohibition safeguards against the incidence of public employee strikes which are inseparable from the collective bargaining process and present a danger to the health, safety and general well-being of all state residents. Since 1959, when the first compulsory public sector bargaining legislation was enacted in Wisconsin, there has been a dramatic increase in public employee unionization and in the incidence of public employee strikes.

Enterprise Zone Act. The suggested Enterprise Zone Act establishes a mechanism for the establishment of enterprise zones—areas of inadequate population and limited economic activity which have been released from most government controls and regulations in order to promote economic and population revitalization.

Fiscal Responsibility

Tax Limitation—State Constitutional Amendment.. To prevent taxes from increasing year after year, a state constitutional amendment has been suggested that would limit the total amount of taxes that can be imposed by the state. The tax revenue limit would be an appropriate percentage of total annual personal income in the state, and has ranged between 6 per cent and 14 per cent in those states where the amendment has been proposed.

Spending and Debt Limitation Amendment. The suggested Spending and Debt Limitation Constitutional Amendment would limit the growth of state spending to the estimated growth of the state economy as established by law.

Death Tax Reform Act. The suggested Death Tax Reform Act remodels the state estate tax computation system. Reform of this system is necessary in order to ease some of the financial burden imposed on a decedent's estate, thus providing that more of the value of the estate be passed on to family and other heirs. [Various thresholds on estate taxes protect families and small businesses, but these are deemed inadequate by those who want to protect inherited wealth by completely eliminating what they insist on calling the “death tax.”]

Fundamental Rights.

The Right to Work Act. The suggested Right to Work Act establishes public policy with respect to compulsory or “closed shop” unionism. The Right to Work Act protects the right of each person to join or decline to join any labor union or association without fear of penalty or reprisal.

Sagebrush Rebellion Act. The suggested Sagebrush Rebellion Act establishes a mechanism for the transfer of ownership of millions of acres of unappropriated public lands from the federal government to the states.

Student Freedom of Choice Act. The suggested Student Freedom of Choice Act would prohibit the collection of mandatory student activity fees in state-operated colleges and universities.

Criminal Justice

Crime Victims Compensation Act. The suggested Crime Victims Compensation Act enables the creation of District Crime Victims Compensation Boards to hear claims and to make monetary awards to innocent persons who suffer catastrophic loss as as result of violent criminal victimization.

Improving Education

Textbook Content Standards Act. The suggested Textbook Content Standards Act establishes the requirement that textbooks and teaching materials adopted for use in public schools accurately portray American history, tradition and values. Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the classroom today is the philosophy of the government tomorrow.” [There's no citation, of course. Is this another bogus Lincoln quote? If so, how nice to find it in an item about accuracy in textbooks!]

Honor America Act. The suggested Honor America Act requires that all public elementary and secondary school students recite the Pledge of Allegiance during each school day.

Governmental Affairs

Washington, D.C. Amendment Rejection Resolution. The suggested Washington, D.C. Amendment Rejection Resolution provides legislatures with a formal method of detailing their reasons for opposition and rejection of the proposed Washington, D.C. Constitutional Amendment. [In other words, the black citizens of D.C. are disenfranchised and we want to keep it that way.]

Energy

More American Energy Program. Tight supplies of crude oil and refined petroleum products have stirred a great deal of interest in the increased production of domestic conventional fuels and the development of alternate fuels and renewal energy resources. [This entry starts off well, outlining a seemingly reasonable program of tax incentives for solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass energy projects. It includes elimination of redundant bureaucratic regulation—sounds good, but could mean deregulation in practice—and one-stop permit processes. Then comes the next “reform,” which is the poison pill in the mix.] Requirement that state departments of energy regulations and standards meet, but not exceed in restrictiveness, those required by the Federal Clean Air Act of 1977. [ALEC loves states' rights except when California enacts stricter air standards than those promulgated by the feds. Right.]

Resolutions

Voluntary School Prayer Resolution. Resolved, by the Legislature of [name of state], each house concurring, that this legislature respectfully urges the Congress of the United States to propose a constitutional amendment authorizing the several states to enact legislation permitting voluntary, non-denominational prayer in their public schools.

Plus ça change

As you can see from the above compendium, ALEC's 1980 legislative program is not only alive and well, much of it is already embodied in measures introduced or enacted across the country. It was impolitic of Prof. Cronon to point this out. He dared teach us some contemporary history. By the terms of ALEC's accuracy-in-education standards, he would have been well advised to concentrate on adumbrating our nation's Christian heritage and the anti-union convictions of the Founding Fathers.

Let us all be grateful that he didn't!

Why wait till 2012?

The San Francisco Chronicle's “Bad Reporter,” Don Asmussen, neatly pots the crazy Minnesota congresswoman with an anticipatory cartoon. I'm just concerned it will give Bachmann ideas. Run for president a year early? It's just crazy enough to work!

Another non-miracle miracle

Get well, Allen Wright

I hope Allen Wright beats the odds and experiences a full recovery from the hit-and-run accident that put him in the hospital on Sunday, March 13. He's the teenager who received some previous publicity for his invention of “A Note to God,” an iPhone application that delivers messages to ... well, no one. However, users of the application get to enjoy sharing their prayers anonymously with other believers (and only God will know who they are). It hardly seems necessary to acquire an iPhone app to send God little notes, but what-the-hey, it's a digital age.

Anyway, today's headlines report that Allen is out of the eight-day coma that followed the accident and he is responding—apparently with some comprehension—to family members and medical personnel. It's a very encouraging sign.

But it's not a miracle, despite what some devout people want to believe. Here are some comments posted by believers on the website of the Sacramento Bee:

Miracles do happen...Awesome....

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God always has a way of turning a negative situation into a positive one!

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My first thought is, "God has answered your letter Allen".

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It's a miracle from god that he brought Mr. Wright out of his coma.

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to God be the glory! Yes, there is power in prayer. And I guarantee, that every one of you reading this post, would begin praying when ANY family or friend becomes ill or experiences an accident.

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That news gave me the chills. What an awesome God we have.

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Divine Intervention.

Did the “awesome God” who allowed Allen to wander into the path of a speeding car decide to tidy up his own mess and divinely intervene to restore his victim to consciousness? Did he repent of his plan to take out the boy who was spamming him? The Bee tells a slightly different story. The doctors at Mercy San Juan Medical Center injected Allen with drugs to deepen his trauma-induced coma. It was an attempt to protect the patient by reducing brain swelling, giving him time to heal without suffering the additional trauma that brain-swelling would induce. After one week, the doctors withdrew the sedatives. Within hours, Allen opened his eyes.

Not exactly a miracle, but still an encouraging sign. He then demonstrated that he could respond to questions by sticking out his tongue. Quoted in the Bee, neurologist Kavian Shahi said, “One of the most important things we like to see from patients is whether they follow commands. It indicates they can understand language and react to language. It takes a lot of brain power to do that.”

The Bee reporter asked Dr. Shahi if Wright's awakening was aided by the prayers offered up on his behalf. The doctor gave a discreet response:

“Sometimes I think it does. Sometimes I think it doesn't,” he said. “I don't actively encourage it. But in my opinion, it never hurts to pray.”

No, it never hurts to pray. I encourage all believers to do so regularly. It keeps them out of trouble and out of our way. Praying for Allen isn't going to do him any good, but it might calm the nerves of those who pray. I guess that's good. Sort of.

Allen's brain, which probably still thinks there is a God, may be on the mend. Let's hope so. But I won't bother to pray.

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Allen Wright's recovery, whether complete or partial, is certain to be difficult and probably lengthy and expensive. A fund has been set up: Allen Wright's Foundation for a Better Life, Wells Fargo, 6047 Sunrise Boulevard, Citrus Heights, CA 95610.

Scholastic solidarity

On the ramparts

I am a math teacher.

I teach in a public school.

I am a union member.

All of these things are good things, at least in my opinion. I realize that some people think otherwise. First of all, math is clearly an unpopular subject, despite its beauty and utility. When you admit to being a math teacher to a stranger, prepare to hear, “Oh, I could never do math” or “Math was my worst subject in school.” You will surely die of asphyxiation if you hold your breath waiting for the first person to say, “Math was my favorite subject!” They are few and far between.

Then there are those people who snidely refer to “government schools” when speaking of public educational institutions, as if they are somehow inherently inferior to private or sectarian schools. Actually, when you allow for our non-selective open-admission policies, we do pretty well. Our best students are as good as any you'll find anywhere else. Our worst have no counterparts at the private schools because they were never allowed in in the first place—but we do the best we can to help them anyway.

And the people who say “government schools” don't seem especially to mind driving on “government roads” or eating “government approved” food or drinking “government filtered” water.

Finally, of course, there's that business about union rapacity and the efforts of union members to destroy our way of life...

Excuse me? What folks so fondly imagine as “our way of life” is a union product. Really!

Look for the union label, idiots!

The forty-hour work week? Paid vacations? Who invented those? Not the robber barons. Not the corporate executives. Civilized work hours and reasonable recreation periods are the result of union efforts and collective bargaining.

Want to go back to the “good old days” before unions? Good luck! Planning to take your kids with you and put them to work to support you? (Those child-labor laws are so restrictive! Five-year-olds used to be really useful in those factories!)

The supposedly liberal mainstream media does a pretty lousy job of covering stories about labor unions and working conditions. Look how supinely they parrot right-wing smears: Why call an upset teacher a “union demonstrator” when you can call her a “union thug”? Why refer to a union executive as a “union leader” when you can tag him as a “union boss”? I once wrote a letter to my local paper to complain about a reference to “union bosses” in what was supposed to be a straightforward news report. Why, I asked, are my elected union officials being described as “bosses,” as if to suggest criminality and racketeering? The newspaper published my letter, but I've never seen any improvement in its coverage.

Sometimes I get snarky comments from acquaintances (seldom from friends, since I avoid making friends with idiots) who whine about the cushy jobs that teachers have. They tend to focus on things like summer vacation (we don't get paid for summer months, you know) and supposedly short hours (as if we're off the clock when our in-class hours are done). They look at a fifteen-unit load and express amazement that we work “only” fifteen hours per week. (Like I said: idiots.) They have no clue at all.

When they tell me I get too much time off, I tell them they get too little. Get a union, I suggest.

Of course, a lot of us still have to work during those summer “vacations” to make ends meet. Perhaps our rapacious union reps didn't extract as many concessions as the uninformed segment of the public thinks. Time to take to the streets again!

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See more at Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions! Thanks to Steve Lazar for kicking this off.

Lumpers and splitters

Considering a “stupiphany”

The secondary school math curriculum used to be extremely predictable in the middle decades of the twentieth century. High school freshmen took elementary algebra, sophomores enrolled in geometry, juniors refreshed and extended their first-year curriculum with intermediate algebra, and college-prep seniors took trigonometry. That's just the way it was in many places across the United States (and certainly when I was in high school).

Eventually, though, many changes occurred. While that old-fashioned core curriculum survives in many ways, it certainly drifted. Algebra trickled down into middle school and high school seniors started taking introductory calculus (or something called “analysis”). Perversely, however, the old high school courses also migrated into the college curriculum, where we originally called them “remedial” and then relabeled them with the less pejorative “developmental” tag. I think that such remedial courses used to be the province of what we call “continuation” high schools, but today most developmental math is taught in community colleges. My college, for example, teaches more developmental math than anything else. We even teach basic arithmetic to those who failed to learn it in elementary school.

And we teach developmental math over and over and over again to students who fail it the first, second, or even third time. Success rates hover between fifty and sixty percent for most of the classes, indicating the degree of recycling that goes on. It's maddening to both students and instructors.

Most of my colleagues in the math department know the secrets to success in a math class. In fact, they're hardly secrets because we share them constantly with our students: attend class regularly, pay attention, study the material, do the homework, and ask for help when you're stuck. While luck plays a role (catastrophic illness, financial distress, and family emergencies can derail anyone), most student failure is based on the neglect of those fundamental guidelines.

Of course, we don't just enunciate the principles of successful math learning and then sit back and wait for our students to succeed. We try to meet them halfway (or more than halfway). We offer tutoring centers, accommodations for learning disabilities, on-line support, and different course formats. These days the traditional classroom-based lecture class is often supplemented with on-line instruction or hybrid classes that combine in-class and on-line elements. Students may be able to enroll in self-paced computer-based math labs, too.

And then there are the “splits,” which try to slow down the pace of the curriculum by slicing the courses in half. Students having trouble with our one-semester elementary algebra might be permitted to take half of the course during fall semester and the second half during spring. You can spot these courses in college catalogs where they bear labels like “Algebra 1A” and “Algebra 1B.” Many schools have even done this with arithmetic. You can struggle during the fall to learn your times table and save fractions till spring.

I wish I were kidding, but I exaggerate only slightly.

Guess what? The students who enroll in the splits aren't particularly more successful than those enrolled in regular lecture classes, on-line classes, or math labs. Are we rescuing a few additional students with each new approach, or would they do as well (or as badly) if we just ushered them all into a classroom and made them sit in rows?

I believe we do achieve some marginal additional success with the multiple formats because students do learn in different ways and one-size-fits-all is almost never true. Still, I wish the benefits were more than marginal.

This reflection on student success and failure in developmental math was stimulated by a recent post by a pseudonymous community college dean. “Dean Dad” traveled to California last month to attend the San Diego meeting of the League for Innovation in the Community College. He was particularly struck by the remarks of a Bay Area faculty member:

Prof. Myra Snell, from Los Medanos, coined a wonderful word: “stupiphany.” She defined it as that sudden realization that you were an idiot for not knowing something before. The major “stupiphany” she offered was the realization that the primary driver of student attrition in math sequences isn’t any one class; it’s the length of the sequence. Each additional class provides a new exit point; if you want to reduce the number who leave, you need to reduce the number of exit points. If you assume three levels of remediation (fairly standard) and one college-level math class, and you assume a seventy percent pass rate at each level (which would be superhuman for the first level of developmental, but never mind that), then about 24 percent will eventually make it through the first college-level class. Reduce the sequence by one course, and 34 percent will. Accordingly, she’s working on “just in time” remediation in the context of a college-level course. There is definitely something to this.

Um. Under the given assumptions, I can't fault the math (0.70⁴ = 0.2401 and 0.70³ = 0.343), but it is just a tiny bit simplistic. If we squeeze all the remediation into one course, then we'll be rewarded with a 49% overall success rate at the end of the college-level course. Yay!

Except that it certainly wouldn't work.

This is a classic optimization problem—the kind that you see in calculus. Two countervailing factors have to be balanced in order to achieve the best possible outcome. For example, if you want to enclose the maximum possible rectangular area with a given length of fence, you have to balance the contributions of length and width, because one can be increased only at the expense of the other—yet both contribute equally to area. (Thus the ideal figure turns out to be a square. Big surprise!)

In the case of developmental math classes, the splits offer more failure opportunities. On the other hand, they reduce the curriculum to bite-size chunks that more students might be able to master. The more you cram into a course, the more likely the students are to be overwhelmed. The trade-offs are rather obvious.

(Frankly, I prefer that split classes be taught at the same pace as regular classes, because stretching them out to semester length attenuates the reinforcement that most students need. At the halfway point the successful student moves on to the second-half split while the unsuccessful student repeats the first-half class without having to wait till the next term.)

I don't think that Prof. Snell's “stupiphany” is quite as significant as suggested by Dean Dad, although I presume her presentation would be more nuanced at greater length than it is in a one-paragraph summary. (She did, apparently, couch her presentation in terms of timely intervention.) The tension between length of sequence and course content will continue. The experiments will certainly continue. In fact, I can even tell you the direction in which they will go. The splitters having had their day, the lumpers anticipated Snell's observation and are putting accelerated curriculum into place. Courses are being designed and curriculum is being implemented. Hang on to your hat as developmental math tries to speed up.

That's probably a future post.

There ought to be a law

Does tea cloud the mind?

California has been the beneficiary of a series of wet winter storms that dumped snow in the mountains and rain into rivers. After a period of drought, the water is welcome. Nevertheless, we did get used to the advantages of dry weather and heavy rains create circumstances to which we had grown unaccustomed. Various school districts in central California had to cancel classes or postpone the start of the school day to deal with flooded roads.

Apparently most of the school districts have adopted a code system. Parents need only know that it's going to be, for example, an "A" day if classes are cancelled and a "B" day if there's a one-hour delay (so don't expect the school bus at the usual time). Of course, that's only one example. An adjacent school district might use "A" to indicate a normal school schedule and "F" to signal cancellation. Each region has its own system.

This irks my mother no end. Given the sprawling size of our family, Mom has grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a variety of school districts. She takes her role as family matriarch quite seriously and keeps an eye on the various weather reports, road-condition alerts, and school-closure bulletins. She takes the patchwork quilt of codes as a personal affront.

“It's so confusing! Everyone should be using the same system! It only stands to reason! Someone should do something about it!”

That's my right-wing mother complaining that no higher authority like the County Board of Education or State Superintendent of Public Education has intervened and imposed uniformity. As a good son (most of the time), I neglected to observe that she normally takes local control as a sacred principle of government and often denounces state regulation as the next thing to socialism. (Dad goes one step further and equates it to communism or Nazism, depending on the nature of Glenn Beck's most recent rant.)

I guess this kind of “socialism” is okay if it advances your convenience. Otherwise it's the gateway to totalitarianism.

Yes, it all makes sense now.

Browser bigamy

Double your pleasure

Firefox knows that I am Zeno, remembers all kinds of things about me in its cookies, and enables me to post blog comments under that name with a minimum of difficulty. I can go traipsing through the ScienceBlogs and the Discover blogs and Facebook with my Internet identity firmly established (an on-line identity, by the way, that actually dates back to the pre-Internet era—no kidding!). My browser's memory preserves my preferences and smooths my on-line excursions.

Except when it doesn't. I need my real-life identity when I check into my faculty website or my personal Facebook page (not to be confused with my blogger Facebook page). Before I hit on a convenient solution, I found myself having to log out of various accounts and log into others. It was a minor nuisance. I especially didn't like it when I would be finishing up a post or comment, only to discover upon trying to publish it that I was operating under the wrong handle. (My students really don't need comments from some stranger named Zeno.)

The solution arose rather naturally. My school district has (big surprise!) standardized on Microsoft Office products, so all of our computers default to Internet Explorer. On my campus computer, therefore, I became accustomed to accessing the college's website using IE. When I finally prevailed upon our microcomputer support people to give me installation rights on my own office computer (not a particularly easy task, by the way), I promptly installed Firefox. While beginning to use it to log in to my favorite sites (like the aforementioned ScienceBlogs, for example), I paused to consider whether to use my real-life persona or my blog identity. Soon I realized it was easy to let Firefox be Zeno's browser while retaining IE as the real-life math professor's browser.

I set up a similar configuration at home. These days it's not unusual for me to have two different browser windows simultaneously open on my desktop. Google Reader tracks my favorite blogs in Firefox while IE keeps an eye on my college pages. Depending on which browser I'm using at the moment, I'm either real-life me or Internet me. I am such a power user!

Um. Not really. A genuine power user would configure different personalities within the same browser program and toggle back and forth at need, but I've never taken the time to learn how to do that. This is as much a story of “good enough for now” as it is a story of browser bigamy. It reminds me of the glory days of Lotus 1-2-3 (remember that?). One of the officers of my local computer club revealed that he didn't have a word processing program. He was using the 1-2-3 spreadsheet to do the job. He'd create wide cells, format them as text, enable word-wrapping, and type each paragraph of his document into different cells. He was very proud of himself, even though it sounded like a cumbersome and jury-rigged system. But what the heck. It worked, and he was comfortable with it. My computer-club colleague and I aren't quite Rube Goldbergs, but we have our delusions of adequacy.

Speaking of which, now it's time for me to pop over to my IE window. I just graded an exam and discovered that one of my chronic underachievers didn't bother to show up to take it. Zeno can't drop him from the class roster, but real-life math professor can!

Lettered ladies

Always the gentleman

The other day I found myself in the unaccustomed position of defending Sarah Palin. It was, I admit, a very mild defense, but a defense nonetheless. A member of the Friday lunch bunch was castigating the former half-term governor of Alaska for having attended five colleges (University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College, University of Idaho, and Matanuska-Susitna College) on her way to a bachelor's degree in communications. Having attended and earned units at five different colleges myself, I did not consider persistence at a single institution to be a virtue in and of itself. (I did, however, complete degree requirements at four of them.)

The habitués of the Friday lunch bunch are mostly former journalists these days, the ink-stained wretches having supplanted the coterie of old legislative hands that used to frequent the TGIF observances. And “ink” is the right word, too. All of them served in the trenches when hot lead and metal plates and barrels of black goo were standard tools of the newspaper business. I don't go back quite that far, but I am accepted into this journalistic fraternity because I, too, have worked for a major metropolitan newspaper (but not for very long). Besides, I have seniority in the lunch bunch, being one of the last survivors of the original gang with state capitol experience.

We are a largely left-of-center group, naturally concerned that the president is not even close to being the extreme liberal of right-wing accusations, and cheerfully derogatory in our references to the various nut-case conservative cabals running Republican legislative caucuses throughout the nation and in entirely too many governors' mansions. Palin gets extra contempt from the Friday gang because of her journalistic pretensions and her slender résumé as a reporter (but not as slim as mine). It doesn't help her cause, of course, that even her prepared remarks come out as tossed word salads of right-wing talking points: blah, blah, blah ... American greatness ... blah, blah, blah ... Reagan ... blah, blah, blah ... God bless America ... blah, blah, blah ... war on terror ... blah, blah, blah. Jealousy is probably involved a little. Imagine pocketing $50,000 a pop for that kind of disjointed drivel, as Palin did at Stanislaus State University.

Despite her degree in communications (with an emphasis in journalism), Palin opted to hire a ghostwriter for her autobiography. She's apparently been too busy doing other things.

Like serving as a role model.

California has spawned a Palin camp follower who boasts that she is a “blogger extraordinaire” (that may be premature) with a master's degree in English on top of a bachelor's degree that included journalism coursework. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by a regular visitor to my blog (hi, Kathie!). She was puzzled by the prospect of an English major with a graduate degree who spews out this kind of breathless prose (spacing, spelling, and punctuation preserved from the original):

I'm a San Diego girl& patriotic American at heart!I graduated from San Diego State University in 2005 where I studied English & Journalism.I also have a Masters' Degree in English.I never thought I'd be setting up a blog,but feel I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to share with readers topics that are important to me & I hope to you as well.I will use this blog as a platform of sorts to promote not only conservative values,but strong,conservative female candidates.Sarah Palin is the epitome of this female.Strong,sincere,classy,intelligent & graceful.I have heard individuals describe her as a modern-day Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan.It is she who has inspired me to get involved politically.The mere mention of her name sends the main-stream media into a tizzy.It is also my hope this blog will become a platform for conservative females everywhere.(God knows we could use more representing us).And yes,I also hope to prove that,contrary to popular opinion,it CAN be cool to be a young conservative.You can also catch me from time to time as a guest on #1 AK Talk Radio Host Eddie Burke's show where I discuss Sarah and national issues.

Odd stuff. While the political sentiments are obviously contrary to mine, I am struck by what an admitted English major does to the language. That can't help but catch my attention, if only for the moment. Does San Diego State University offer a master's degree in English as a third language? Was writing part of the curriculum? Optional, perhaps?

At least we can rest assured that she does not suffer from a narcissistic obsession with her own prose.

What's in a name?

The quest for catchy

Earlier this month I received a very welcome e-mail message from the general editor of a university press:

We are very interested in publishing your novel

I stared at the screen for a while. Time was frozen and it took several seconds to thaw and allow me to catch my breath.

That morning I had been shrugging on my coat and preparing to pick up my briefcase when my computer beeped to indicate the arrival of new e-mail. It was time to go to school for my first class of the day. I glanced at my watch and decided I could take a few seconds to see what had dropped into my in-box. It ended up, of course, stretching into several minutes. I composed a quick thank-you-thank-you-thank-you note and then dashed off to school.

It was observed that I was unusually high-spirited during the morning's classes.

The general editor sent me a summary review from the manuscript editor he had commissioned to plow through my tome. Key phrases jumped out:

Not only is the story itself generally well told, but it effectively conveys significant aspects of Azorean-American life in California.... [T]he courtroom scenes are especially well managed.... [M]y overall evaluation of the ms remains fully positive, and I look forward to the opportunity of sharing my thoughts with the author directly.

The ellipses, of course, conceal the manuscript editor's tiny little quibbles (“the book is at least 15-20% longer than the central narrative thread warrants,” “though the story of Paul's evolution from child prodigy to mathematician is well-enough told and does present a focal point for an alternative assimilation narrative, I'm not altogether persuaded it fully coheres with the rest of the book,” “something might be done to differentiate the speech of less well-educated from better-educated characters”). Hardly worth mentioning!

He also didn't much care for my working title. Thus my faithful readers get to join in part of the fun. What should my book's title be? For some useful background, here's is a plot summary that I used to pitch the book:

This is the story of the Francisco family, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores who settle on a dairy farm in California’s Central Valley. Their plans to eventually return to the Old Country fall by the wayside as their success grows and their American lives take root. The legacy of one generation becomes a point of contention as the members of the next generation begin to compete to inherit and control their heritage, which includes herds of cattle and tracts of farm land. The death of Teresa Francisco, the family’s matriarch, sets off a string of battles (both personal and legal) between brothers, spouses, in-laws, and cousins.

Yes, Teresa is based on my grandmother, the linchpin of my family and the vital center without whom the family flew to flinders. A wily old lady, she drew her will to force her two sons (my father and my uncle) to cooperate as co-executors of the estate. As the elder son, my uncle was deeply aggrieved that he did not get to call the shots himself, but I'm certain it was no accident that my grandmother chose to clip his wings in the way she did.

Unfortunately, there was also a lawsuit. My father and uncle had an older sister who predeceased her parents. She was my much-loved aunt and godmother (and is the dedicatee of my novel). Her widower, my embittered uncle-godfather, resented receiving nothing from the estate (although his children got quite a lot) and bankrolled a legal challenge to the will. The battle left scars that remain to this day, nearly thirty years later.

That was the raw material I drew upon to write my novel. Since I was not privy to all of the backstage maneuvering and scheming, I had to speculate on motivations and make up events to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Real-life people provided the models but their fictional representatives were not obligated to conform to the originals that inspired them. It's a novel. It's based on a true story, but I made it up. So far, the readers of the manuscript have been all over the map in guessing what parts are “real” and what parts are purely fanciful creations of my fevered imagination. For future readers, I'll admit that the accidental circumcision episode is quite true to life. Hey, if Laurence Sterne can write about such an event in Tristram Shandy, why can't I? (Mom wishes I would drop that section, but my manuscript editor favors “holding on” to the damaged foreskin—in what I'm sure was a deliberate choice of wry language on his part.)

But let's go back to titles. Here's an alphabetical roster of some of the candidates we have considered thus far. Which, if any, do you favor? If you wish to nominate other possibilities, I'm eager to hear them. I look forward to seeing what pops up in the comments.

• California Dairy
• California Gothic
• Cow
• Cow Boys
• Crying Over Spilt Milk
• Curdled Milk
• Dairy Family
• Dear Dairy
• Don't Have a Cow
• Have a Cow
• Land of Milk and Money, The
• Milk of Human Kindness, The
• Moo Cows
• Past Your Eyes
• Promised Land
• Raw Milk
• Sour Cream
• Spilt Milk
• Split Milk

In the meantime, I am trimming and editing the manuscript with an eye toward an April 1 deadline. If I can deliver a satisfactory revision by that date (or close to it), the university press will put my novel on its publication calendar and it could see print as early as January 2012.

Darn. Too late for Christmas!

Forrest in Sacramento

Darwin Day 2011

California's state capital observed Darwin Day on Sunday, February 13, 2011, at the La Sierra Community Center in Carmichael. The event was co-sponsored by several Sacramento-area organizations, including Sacramento Area Skeptics (the sponsors of last year's California tour by PZ Myers), the departments of biology and anthropology at Sacramento State University, the departments of astronomy and physics at Sacramento City College, Atheists and other Freethinkers, and local chapters of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

There were about two to three hundred people in attendance. They were welcomed by Mynga Futrell, co-chair of the organizing committee, who made a special point of emphasizing that the event was in honor of Charles Darwin and not a celebration of atheism. It was apparent that the organizers were at pains to make religious people feel welcome at the event, even at the cost of making them uncomfortable by stressing so earnestly that they were among friends. The Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento had a display table in the back of the hall, but no other religious organizations were visible. Perhaps the outreach to theistic evolutionists will succeed in drawing other sects to next year's Darwin Day, but it's not an easy task to construct a big-tent approach to Darwin Day when so many of Darwin's admirers consider him the man who made God an unnecessary hypothesis in biology. I expect that Darwin Day will continue to be dominated by people for whom religion is at best a cultural artifact and at worst the mortal enemy.

The master of ceremonies was Liam McDaid, the astronomy coordinator at Sacramento City College. McDaid made for a high-spirited emcee, lapsing occasionally into an Irish brogue when he deemed that the occasion warranted. He gave a laudatory introduction to the afternoon's featured speaker, Dr. Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, professor of philosophy in the department of history and political science, and co-author (with Paul Gross) of Creationism's Trojan Horse.

Back to the Future: Or, What Can We Learn from Louisiana's 2008 Science Education Act?

Dr. Forrest had a front-row seat in her home state of Louisiana as right-wing forces converged on Baton Rouge to push a creationist agenda through the state legislature and onto the desk of the Bayou State's new creation-friendly governor. Her Darwin Day presentation outlined the events and players that produced the nation's first anything-goes science curriculum for public schools.

The Louisiana Science Education Act is one of those legislative measures that supposedly promotes “critical thinking,” but only in the case of evolution or climate change or some other topic disfavored by the Christian right. It never seems important to fret about the lack of statutory critical-thinking guidelines in matters such as the roundness of the earth or the heliocentric nature of the solar system (but perhaps we just need to wait a little longer). It's evolution that must always be called into question and treated with arch-skepticism.

As Forrest pointed out, creationism has evolved over the decades under the pressure of natural selection. As one ploy after another fails, creationism adapts to the new circumstances and changes in response. The foes of evolution, however, never seem to notice the irony of their adherence to Darwin's model. Forrest chose her “Back to the Future” title because Louisiana had enacted an overtly pro-creationist measure in 1981. The U.S. Supreme Court famously declared the bill unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguillard as a violation of the separation between church and state. Having learned at least part of the lesson of the Edwards decision, creationists had redirected their efforts in the 2008 bill. Under the banner of “academic freedom,” they abandoned the mandating of creationism and focused on permitting it.

In the case of the Louisiana Science Education Act, the strategic retreat worked. The creationists crafted a permissive approach that empowered public school teachers to supplement state-approved science texts and instructional materials with whatever outside materials the teachers might choose. This opened the door wide for an influx of creationist literature that creation-minded science teachers (an unfortunately large minority among public-school faculty) could distribute to their students and use as the basis of anti-science instruction. As Forrest phrased it, under the Louisiana Science Education Act, a creationist teacher “can use whatever she wants until she gets caught.” To make matters even worse, the anti-evolutionists managed to co-opt the complaint process provided by the new legislation. Under the regulations approved by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), parents who complain about inappropriate classroom materials will find themselves dealing with a review process stacked in favor of the creationists.

The Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008 was not made out of whole cloth. It had its origins in model legislation promoted by the Discovery Institute. The DI's Casey Luskin was much in evidence during the progress of Senate Bill 733 through the enactment process (the vote was unanimous in its favor in the state senate and 94 to 3 in the state house of representatives) and its arrival on the governor's desk. When Gov. Jindal was supposedly pondering the measure, science organizations across the nation sent him messages exhorting him to veto it. Even his former biology professor, Dr. Arthur Landy, issued an earnest request that Jindal not make it more difficult for Louisiana students to become doctors by debasing their science education (Jindal once planned to go to medical school). The governor ignored them all and did not bother to respond to their arguments.

Although Gov. Jindal signed the bill without any publicity on June 25, 2008, someone apparently tipped off the Discovery Institute that he was about to approve SB 733. The DI posted a victory declaration on its website within minutes of the announcement from the governor's office that SB 733 was now state law. (It now resides on the Louisiana books as Act 473.)

In an appearance on Face the Nation shortly before signing SB 733, Jindal offered TV viewers a word-salad mash-up of nouveau-creationist talking points:

I don’t think students learn by us withholding information from them.… I want them to see the best data. I personally think human life and the world we live in wasn’t created accidentally. I do think that there’s a creator.… Now the way that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness.

“Withholding information”? “Political correctness”? These phrases are mere screens for smuggling creationism into the public school classroom under the guise of promoting “the very best science.” Jindal was flying the combined banners of “teach the controversy” and “academic freedom.” Scientists told him very clearly that these framing devices were a distortion, but he chose not to listen to them. Jindal is, after all, the anointed one. Literally. As Dr. Forrest pointed out, Jindal went through a formal laying-on-of-hands ceremony in 2007 at a Christmas gathering of the Louisiana Family Forum, a group that vigorously lobbied for SB 733 the following year.

Despite the enactment of the Louisiana Science Education Act, creationism has suffered a few recent setbacks. First of all, and perhaps most significantly, BESE approved mainstream scientific textbooks for use in public school classrooms, beating back an attempt by creationists to forestall the adoption of evolution-based biology texts. In addition, creationists posing as science experts have been unmasked as frauds and exponents of discredited and outlandish theories. (Of course, this has seldom discouraged them in the past.)

Forrest stated that she and her colleagues at the Louisiana Coalition for Science will be alert to future attempts by creationists to exploit Act 473 and in particular will assist parents who complain about anti-scientific materials being used in science classes. The deck has been stacked against science in Louisiana, but pro-science forces are vigilant and fighting back. Forrest cited the example of Zachary Kopplin, a high school senior in Baton Rouge who has taken on the ambitious project of repealing the Louisiana Science Education Act. Zachary has his work cut out for him, but he is working in earnest to restore science education's credibility in his home state. Forrest referred interested parties to Zachary's website.

Dr. Forrest's talk was followed by a Q&A session and a birthday party for Charles Darwin, complete with birthday cake. Longtime participants in Sacramento's Darwin Day observations seemed to agree that the fourteenth annual event in the state capital was one of the most successful. It was Dr. Forrest's first visit to Sacramento and her reception was both friendly and enthusiastic. At least one fan was seen getting her autograph on his hardback copy of Creationism's Trojan Horse.

Resources

The National Center for Science Education has posted a video of Barbara Forrest's talk as she delivered it on April 24, 2010. The video is marginal and the audio is poor, but the content closely parallels Forrest's presentation at Sacramento's Darwin Day.

Update: Dr. Forrest's presentation in Sacramento is now posted on the NCSE's YouTube account: Darwin Day 2011.

What's a deadline?

Talking to the wall

She was on my waiting list, but she didn't have proof of prerequisite. In its ebb and flow of procedural enforcement, my college is currently at a high-water mark of insisting that students demonstrate that they have passed their prerequisites. I informed my potential student that she could enroll in my class if two conditions were met: (a) she provided proof of prerequisite and (b) I made it down the waiting list as far as her name.

Like most students who are eager (or pretend to be eager) to get into a class, my potential student dutifully attended each initial class session as I took roll, checked off prerequisites for students who presented their transcripts or verification slips from counselors, and gradually worked my way down the waiting list. It usually takes only a few days for things to shake out. Some students slip quietly away, blocked in their attempt to take a class for which they were not prepared, and others are too impatient to wait more than one day to get admitted. The attrition benefits those who stick it out.

Each time I called roll, I reminded students who had yet to present their qualifications. Each time the number dwindled. The student in question was particularly slow in clearing up her paperwork, but at last the glorious day arrived. When I called her name, she handed in a verification slip to which a counselor had affixed a signature. Since the class had thinned out to a manageable level (in other words, everyone had a desk to sit at), I grandly presented her with a permission slip to add the class.

“Use it right away,” I informed her. “We've come up close to the end of the enrollment period and you need to add before it closes.”

She made some kind of noise, which I hoped was intended as an affirmative acknowledgment, but I wasn't sure. She was the last of the students in attendance who had yet to enroll. My roster was all but complete and I was happily contemplating the end of this particular flurry of paper-pushing.

On the morning of our next class meeting, I checked my on-line class roster. My student's name was still on the waiting list. She was not on the roster of enrolled students. I went to class and observed that she was present, so I asked her to come up to talk to me at the end of the period. This she did (perhaps because I called out to her by name before she slipped out the door with her classmates).

“You know, I hope, that this is the last day to enroll in classes using the permission slips,” I reminded her. I gave her additional detail: “If you don't use it today, you'll need a late admission that requires the signature of an academic dean. The deans do not like doing this and aren't obligated to sign, so let's not go there, okay? Go directly to enrollment services now and get added to the class. Do it today. Tomorrow will be too late.”

She made that odd noise again and headed toward the door. I fancied that she had nodded her head ever so slightly. In any case, I had explained things with a particular lack of ambiguity.

Two days later our class met again. That morning I discovered that her name was still missing from the roster. Surely she had decided against taking the class. A pity, but these things happen.

My surmise was incorrect. She showed up for class, strolled up to the front of the room, and presented me with a late-add form.

“You need to sign this for me,” she announced.

I admit that I was displeased.

“My signature isn't enough,” I replied, rather tight-lipped. “This will have to go to a dean.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I pressed her a little: “Why didn't you use the permission slip?”

She shrugged. She kept her gaze carefully averted.

“I tried, but they gave me this. They said you have to sign it.”

Yeah. Exasperated, I took the form. The date on it showed that she had waited till after the deadline to try to add via regular permission slip.

“I'll see what I can do,” I said.

After class I took the late-add form to my dean and explained the situation. The dean rolled her eyes.

“There's one in every crowd,” she said. “Has she been attending class? Do you have room to accommodate her?”

When I answered both questions in the affirmative, the dean picked up a pen and scrawled her signature on the form.

“All right,” she said. “Give this back to her and tell her to return to enrollment services with it.”

On the morning of the next class session, I was surprised when the student showed up in my office. She had discovered that her financial aid check would not be released until she was properly enrolled. She earnestly asked me if her late enrollment had been approved. I handed her the form.

“Yes, the dean signed off on it. Take this to enrollment services and they will let you in this time.”

“Okay. I'll go now.”

“Actually, it's nearly time for class. You should wait till after class.”

She hesitated.

“I better go now,” she said. “I have a family emergency and I can't go to class today.”

I considered expressing the hope that no one was bleeding to death at home while she came on campus to visit my office, but I waited too long. She was already gone. Her regular attendance became a thing of the past.

Not long after this incident, I gave the class their first exam. My late-enrolling student didn't pass. She lost several points because she couldn't seem to follow instructions.

It was not exactly a surprise.

Christ on a stick

Bouncy bouncy

The February 10, 2011, installment of “Catholic Answers” featured a pre-recorded interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze. Once considered among the papabili, Arinze is the African prelate whose puckish sense of humor prompted him to cleverly declare that he was “personally opposed” to gunning down all the members of the U.S. Senate, including those Catholic members who “personally oppose” abortion but decline to enact legislation to outlaw it for everyone. (Arinze's audience chuckled appreciatively as the cardinal equated the slaughter of a legislative body with a “pro-choice” decision to terminate a pregnancy. Never doubt that the cardinal and his admirers really see no difference between abortion and murder.)

Arinze was momentarily flummoxed during his “Catholic Answers” interview when host Patrick Coffin quizzed him about permissible practices during the celebration of mass. After a brief discussion of the unsanctioned (but not forbidden) custom of holding hands during the Lord's Prayer, Coffin indulged in a bit of hyperbole:

People say that receiving holy communion on a pogo stick or letting monkeys into the sanctuary is also not forbidden. I guess it's a matter of balance.

Balance? Yes, I would say that's pretty important in the instance of the pogo-stick eucharist. Catholic traditionalists should also be pleased that both hands are usually needed to maintain stability while bouncing about, so that pretty much settles the question of receiving the host in the hand or on the tongue. It puts a premium, though, on the priest's hand-eye coordination as he thrusts the wafer at the communicant's oscillating tongue.

I haven't quite wrapped my head around the monkeys-in-the-sacristy scenario (unicycles, perhaps?), but I have to admit that Coffin is a veritable font of ideas for resuscitating the entertainment value of the Catholic mass. I'd consider going back!

Trim to fit

The power of truncated quotes

I was browsing through Orac's Respectful Insolence when I stumbled across his post on the latest inanity by Mike Adams. The purchase by AOL of the Huffington Post had inspired Adams to celebrate a wonderful new opportunity for “alternative health authors.” (Why do they use so many syllables when “cranks” is so much more economical an expression?) Since HuffPo is “headed in the direction of conventional media,” its wackier writers might be pleased to hear that Mike Adams is ready to welcome them at his NaturalNews site:

Many of the site's best writers are wondering where they can go to get their alternative medicine stories published. It certainly isn't WebMD, which even the New York Times just called out as being a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry, saying “WebMD is synonymous with Big Pharma Shilling”. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/m...)

Are you as impressed as I am? Imagine! Even the stodgy old New York Times recognizes that WebMD is merely a front for rapacious drug companies. Naturally I was inspired to click on the link to learn more. Just how thoroughly did the Times trash WebMD? Inquiring minds want to know!

It was really a bit of a let-down. Writer Virginia Heffernan did not exactly make the statement quoted by Adams. What she really wrote is this:

In more whistle-blowing quarters, WebMD is synonymous with Big Pharma Shilling.

Oh. That's just a little bit different.

True to tell, Heffernan does not actually like WebMD. Equipped with her pertinent experience as a television critic and degrees in English literature, Heffernan goes on to complain about WebMD's product placement, advertisements, and connection to various pharmaceutical companies. She even cites an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, as if he's a reliable source (she calls him “Chuck,” for some reason). She adds that “WebMD has become permeated with pseudomedicine.”

Sounds like Mike Adams would feel right at home.

The invisible student

Lack of proof

It started innocuously enough, as these things often do. Therefore it wasn't immediately apparent that a thing was even starting.

To: Zeno_Ferox
Subject: verification of attendance

Hello Professor Z,

This is ML from your MW math class. I need verification that I was in attendance at class yesterday. An email is fine. It is really important.

Thank you
ml

Color me puzzled. I checked my gradebook. I wrote back.

To: ML
Subject: verification of attendance

M, I have no evidence that you were in class yesterday.

-Z-

My elusive student was quick to respond.

To: Zeno_Ferox
Subject: verification of attendance

I was a few minutes late. I have the homework.

ml

Big whoop. Everyone has the homework. It's included in the syllabus I handed out on Day One. Not impressed.

To: ML
Subject: verification of attendance

M, I have evidence that you were in class on Monday last week because I still have your quiz from that day. However, you were not in class when I returned it on Wednesday, two days later.

You were not in class when I called roll yesterday, or when I returned Wednesday's quiz. I also gave a quiz yesterday at the end of the period, but you apparently did not take it. I checked, and your name is not on any of them. You therefore missed the roll call at the beginning of the period and the quiz at the end of the period. I have no basis for declaring that you were in class yesterday.

-Z-

My student finally provided some useful information.

To: Zeno_Ferox
Subject: verification of attendance

I gave you my prerequisite certificate at the end of class on Wednesday last week. I had to go to my pickup to get it, remember?

I was not there apparently when you called roll yesterday but I do have the quiz in my possession from the end of class. I did not turn it in. I had planned to come see you to talk about me not falling behind. I know the material, it just seems to be taking me longer to recall it. I am asking you to work with me here.

ml

Yes, I did remember the snafu with the prerequisite certificate. He did have to run to fetch it from the parking lot because he had forgotten to bring it to class. It could have been Wednesday. But that was last week. It didn't prove that he had been in class yesterday, on Monday.

Still, we were making a modicum of progress. As for his request that I “work with” him—it seemed to me that I was already doing so at length.

To: ML
Subject: verification of attendance

Okay, M. Now we're getting somewhere. I do remember the matter of your prereq cert, which I have checked off in my gradebook.

Why didn't you turn in the quiz yesterday? There's never a good reason not to, since even one point is better than zero points. Please bring it to class with you tomorrow.

-Z-

If he brought Monday's quiz with him to class on Wednesday, that would be rather good evidence that he had slipped into the classroom some time after the roll call, even if I hadn't noticed him, and been present when I distributed the quiz. This may yet work out well.

A message popped into my in-box on Wednesday morning.

To: Zeno_Ferox
Subject: verification of attendance

Hello Professor Z,

This is ML again. I did not turn in the quiz because I needed some time to go over more slowly. It has been awhile since I have been in school and I am really having a hard time getting all this back. I had all this in high school. If I take my time on it, I remember it. I am really worried about the Exam next week.

May I please make an appointment to see you one-on-one tomorrow, Thursday? I would like to talk about strategy and my concerns about catching on and also, at this point, catching up. I was hoping for an appointment with you tomorrow in the afternoon?

Please let me know.

Thanks.

ml

My best advice for passing a class is to actually attend it. It's a concept.

I didn't write back. Class would meet in a couple of hours and I'd talk to him in person. The time came and I strolled to the classroom. I called roll. (I do this well into the semester until I've learned all the names. It's more difficult with the classes that meet only twice a week.)

No answer from ML. I called his name again.

Silence.

After class I shot off another e-mail message.

To: ML
Subject: verification of attendance

M, were you in class today? I called your name and there was no response.

Not handing in quizzes is always a bad idea. A few points are better to have than zero points.

My office hours are included in the syllabus. You don't need an appointment to drop in during them. I am routinely there.

-Z-

I'll give him this: ML is a prompt e-mail correspondent, even if he is a most elusive student in other respects.

To: Zeno_Ferox
Subject: verification of attendance

No, I was not there. A good family friend went home and died last night. We were all up late.

Today, I worked with my roommate on the math and made some progress. He says I'm getting it but it is going really slow. I had this stuff in high school and my high school grades were good. I'm just having a hard time with the speed that things are going.

I will definitely come in tomorrow. I might have something in the morning but I will see if I can move it so I can be there. Afternoon is better so if I don't make it in the morning, I will look for you in the afternoon.

Thanks.

ml

Naturally I was encouraged that he was able to spend part of Wednesday studying math with his roommate despite the trauma of a good friend's death the night before. He wasn't up to coming to class, but he could hang with a study buddy. Sure, it was odd that he hadn't mentioned the Tuesday evening death in his Wednesday morning missive, but it could have slipped his mind. Anyway, he was definitely coming in to see me tomorrow, on Thursday.

He didn't come to see me that Thursday. Or that Friday. In fact, I never saw him again. I'm beginning to doubt that he actually existed.