Archive for January, 2006
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
I haven’t stopped bicycling
I just maintain another blog (with some friends) that has nothing but bike stuff on it called Hostile City Rollers Dot Com. I did 60 miles yesterday on my own. on my fixie. fun!
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
Flickr Set from Longwood Garden
Wifey and I spent an afternoon at Longwood Gardens. The conservatories there are unnaturally beautiful. I recommend a visit.
Saturday, January 21st, 2006
And Also, 1 More Thing
The National Eye did their first ever podcast.
This is the first podcast I have ever listened to, the whole way thru. funny and awesome as hell.
Saturday, January 21st, 2006
YMD WTF
Meanwhile in New Jersey last night, crazy shit went down at the Yah Mos Defs Show.
And someone filmed it on their cameraphone.
You gotta love the police.
Saturday, January 21st, 2006
Kilroys at Cawleys
Had a night out last night. Had some Kilroys at the local bar: Upper Darby’s finest Cawleys.
Perhaps the high point of the evening comedy wise, was the appearance of John Stossel on the big TV behind us. Lots of moustache rides jokes were thrown around.
The best:
Shawn: “I wonder if he still has ringing in his ears from when Dr. D David Shultz smacked him around for asking him if wrestling is fake…”
Me:”But if you believe that wrestling is fake, then how can you believe that his getting slapped around was real? its a hairy question, ontologically…”
My wife does not think this is funny. I’m still laughing about it.
I kind of wonder about Stossel’s recent education piece. The one where Belgian kids score better then American kids and laugh and call them dumb. Specifically:
To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.
Belgian kids cleaned the American kids’ clocks, and called them “stupid.”
We didn’t pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey’s kids have test scores that are above average for America.
Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, “I’m shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us.”
The Belgian students didn’t perform better because they’re smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better. At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.
American schools don’t teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don’t have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids — it’s a kind of voucher system. Government funds education — at many different kinds of schools — but if a school can’t attract students, it goes out of business.
Here’s my sneaking suspicion: This is not an apples to apples comparison. He is comparing standardized test scores from a public school in New Jersey to a voucher system school in Europe.
Questions that I need answered in order to possibly buy what Mr Stossel is selling:
How similar are these two schools or samplings of students?
Does the European school system have an admission policy or standard? Does the American school?
Were the samplings of test students of the same ‘track’?
It seemed to me that the TV piece kind of hindged on this one sampling: An incredibly sensational comparison, with not enough details.
Maybe its not completely fake. Maybe I hear some ringing in my ears. I can’t say for sure.