Part 9 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.

Perhaps it’s surprising considering the U.S.’s supposed death spiral in mathematics, but we like numbers. We like the idea of pinning exactitude on things, on, you know, the right answer. And numbers lend themselves to lists and rankings. We like lists and rankings, particularly school rankings. From magazine stories about colleges to Websites about grammar schools, school lists abound. But what those lists and numbers don’t tell you at all is what kind of experience your individual kid will have at a school. Along the way, they may be committing serious, mean-spirited damage to lots of communities where real kids are trying to learn. [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 3 Comments »

It’s really amazing how much of the talk around the NFL this season has centered on non-football issues. It is more than I can ever remember, and that is saying something, as there is always a fair amount of that stuff going on. The early part of this past week included a lot of discussion of religious touchdown celebrations. Husain Abdullah of the Kansas City Chiefs was penalized after sliding to the ground and praying in Muslim fashion after he returned an interception for a touchdown in the third quarter of his team’s win over New England on Monday Night Football.

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10. Cooking with Lard

9. The Amazing Racist: Ferguson, Missouri

8. The Better Butter Batter Broadcast

7. Chunky Brewster

6. Intolerant Cruelty

5. The Lards of Fatbush

4. Calling a Spade a Spade

3. Waiting for Hefty

2. Tales from the Darky Side

1. Cooking with More Lard
 

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I am fast becoming a big Dennis Lehane fan. I read Shutter Island and loved it. I recently reviewed Live By Night and loved it. Even more recently, I devoured The Drop in one bite (on a flight between Cleveland and New York/JFK) and loved it. That’s a pretty good track record!

Bob is a loner, a bit of a social misfit, a man with secrets that come between him and the world — and Bob is desperately lonely. When he finds a battered puppy stuffed in a garbage can, he seems to have finally found a friend – not only the puppy, but a woman he meets nearby who encourages him to take in the dog. It would not be wise to step between the man and his new friends.

That’s only part of the story. Bob works for his Cousin Marv at the bar everyone thinks Marv owns, but is really a front for the Chechen mob. Cousin Marv used to be somebody, be a tough guy, but in the end, he wasn’t tough enough. The Chechens treat him like an errand boy and it galls him, maybe enough to do something stupid.

I think everyone reading The Drop sees the end coming. Cousin Marv’s bar is going to be “the drop” on one of the biggest nights of the year and that makes them a target. We all know that something bad is going to happen – the question is who will it happen to and how will they react. You can’t help but root for Bob, I think, and his poor puppy and his friend, Nadia. You want things to work out for them and there are so many ways this could all go wrong. I kept expecting one more twist, one more complication, and that’s the tension that kept me turning pages, rushing towards the end.

I am looking forward to seeing the movie, although I had a hard time imagining Tom Hardy as a misfit loner…until I saw the stills from the movie. You can see it in the hunch of his shoulders and the set of his mouth. It’s going to be interesting to watch. In the meantime, I strongly recommend the book. It’s a quick read and very enjoyable. It looks like I’ll be working my way through Lehane’s back catalog, while I wait for the next novel.

My copy of The Drop was an advanced reader copy, provided free of charge.

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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. .002: The Emperor has become painfully aware that people have been stretching and twisting the word “too” like a verbal taffy and transforming it into the word “teal;” or, more accurately, “teeeeuwl.” Ths abominable distortion is often found in close proximity to the work “omigod,” as in, “Omigod, me teeeeuwl!” This affectation has been creeping up toward “maximum Emperor annoyance” since the late nineties and it shall end, today.

The Punishment: Those who distort this short, sweet, effective word shall, likewise, be distorted on a little device the Imperial Dungeon Keeper likes to call “The Taffy Machine.” Is such a little word worth so much…um…mutilation?

Now, go forth and obey.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

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There are multiple sides to most stories, right? That’s what people say, anyway. Here at BSGS, despite the fact that most of our stories fall pretty firmly on one side or the other, I guess an argument could be made that many stories could be placed on the opposite side of the ledger if you just looked at them from a different perspective. I am a person of strong opinions, so I would likely tell you that you were wrong if you told me that you disagreed with the side on which I placed one of these incidents of wrongdoing or heroism, but it’s my column so I am allowed to do that. Some things, though, really can reasonably be seen from both perspectives, and this week’s lead story is one of them. In fact, I started this out as a Good Sports story. That did not last. The subject is Minnesota Twins pitcher Phil Hughes, who missed out on a significant bonus this week due to bad luck and then a bad choice. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports // 2 Comments »

10. The only ‘action’ you got all summer was inadvertent, and on a crowded moving subway car

9. All your dreams of an early retirement only served to prove you can’t always trust a Nigerian prince

8. You’re the Commissioner of the National Football League

7. You got confused, and thought it was now perfectly legal to smoke recreational marijuana in Washington, the city

6. That giant mouse you saw wasn’t at Disneyland

5. The Mid-East hotel you stayed in had a lower Michelin rating than Abu Ghraib

4. You got in trouble because you were lying naked on your hotel bed when the maid walked in…finally!

3. Your sunburn was so red, cars stopped at you and waited for you to change

2. Your Carnival Cruise cruise made the news

1. At the company picnic, you really ticked off the boss by drinking too much beer and then peeing in the swimming pool — from the diving board
 

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It’s been a few months, so I guess it’s time for another column about how big an idiot Jameis Winston is. The Florida State quarterback and reigning Heisman Trophy winner continues to prove that he just doesn’t get it. This time, he was suspended for Saturday night’s game against Clemson after making a public ass of himself on campus last week.
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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree 55C: Henceforth, there shall be no more click-bait headlines, unless the content of the connected article proves the headline to be indisputably true. For instance: “This pit bull tried to eat this kitten; what happens next will blow your mind…” If readers do not actually experience aneurisms as a result of reading, the headline is false and punishment will ensue. Consider, as well, “This article will change your life…” Well, it had better, is all I can say.  And if a headline claims that “This is the best post game speech, ever,” it bloody well had better be. Or else.  Because if it turns into some prancing, weak-bearded, self-centered, mediocre little high school spud spouting every coaching cliché he’s ever heard as he trumpets about “attitude” (albeit  with jauntiness and pluck), there will be Hades to pay. All we are asking is that the authors deliver on their promises. This is all within authorial control; therefore, the Emperor will feel no guilt in doling out punishment.

The Punishment: Violators will be thrown into a special dungeon. The sign on the entrance door reads “Most comfortable dungeon ever where you will never, ever be eviscerated, emasculated or masticated!” What happens next will blow up your mind.

Now. go forth and obey.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

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You’ve likely heard a lot about the Adrian Peterson debacle (including a good piece on this site), but I’m not weighing in here on abuse, or whether he’s justifiably doing what was done to him, or even on the various dummies who’ve gotten some press time because of this. I’m not writing about all that. [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock // 8 Comments »

10. Law and Order: SUV

9. Everybody Loves Ramen

8. Alimentary

7. America’s Funniest Home Pregnancy Tests

6. The Vampire Blogs

5. Justified: How I Prefer My Paragraphs

4. CSI: NCIS: NYPD: LMNOP

3. Survivor: Bayonne

2. Marvel’s Agents of B.O.R.E.D.

1. Sunday Night Football: Special Victims Unit
 

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We are now two weeks into the NFL season, and much of the coverage continues to be about non-football issues, much to the league’s chagrin. Off-the-field issues are dominating the airwaves, and understandably so. Hot on the heels of the whole Ray Rice/domestic violence mess, Adrian Peterson, one of the league’s biggest stars, has been charged with child abuse.

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10. The Wit and Wisdom of Rick Perry

9. Betamax Repair

8. Guesstimating

7. Pig Latin

6. Freakonomics

5. Dressage

4. (Double Major) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

3. Competitive Eating

2. Hemorrhoid Transplantation

1. Creative Reading
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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On NPR the other day I heard Graham Hill talking about the project LifeEdited. That prompted me to watch his TED talk about his idea, “Edit Your Life.” Hill talks about his own efforts to edit his living space, and proposes how much simpler, and, surprisingly, better, our lives might be if we made do with a lot less. [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock // 2 Comments »

On Monday, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell released his latest report issued as the academics integrity monitor for Penn State, a position to which he was appointed by the NCAA when it handed down historic sanctions a couple of years ago as the Jerry Sandusky scandal unfolded. As expected, the report was glowing and included recommendations to remove the remainder of the bowl ban and to return the rest of the scholarships that had been docked. I, along with the rest of Nittany Nation, was thrilled to see this happen. My Twitter feed exploded with unabashed excitement about the promise of the future of the team. As happy as I am to see most of the sanctions brought to an end, I remain unsatisfied, as there are still some aspects of this wholly unjustified punishment that remain in place. Beyond that, the narrative that goes along with this action, from the NCAA, the school’s administration, and the media, is a false one and it grates on me to an incredible extent.

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Tags: bad sports, good sports // 1 Comment »

10. Touched by a Physicist

9. The 420 Club

8. Religulous – The Series

7. (Don’t) Believe

6. Hour of Sour

5. A Show About Nothingness

4. How I Met Your Silverback

3. The Fraud Squad

2. We’re A Non-Prophet Organization

1. Highway to Nowhere
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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My lead Bad Sports story this week was nearly a minor Good Sports story last week. I had already written the blurb and was preparing to post my column when new information came to light that changed the whole situation. Josh Shaw, a senior defensive back on the USC football team, is in major trouble after a crazy set of events that took him from being lauded as a hero to having his college career in jeopardy after he was shown to be a big-time liar. [Read more →]

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10. The Cat With The Gat

9. Duck Duck Goose…No Duck!!

8. Goodnight Forever, Moon

7. Charlie and the Munitions Factory

6. The Lion, the Witch, and the War Cannon

5. Where the Wild Things Were

4. Cloudy with a Chance of Shrapnel

3. One Fish Two Fish Dead Fish Stew Fish

2. Bazooka Joe

1. The Wizard of Uzi
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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Most of the big sports now have some degree of instant replay being used in an effort to get more calls correct. In order to avoid endless games, the big sports have implemented a challenge system, where coaches can officially question calls and ask for a review. I see this as great progress in sports, as I hate to see games turn on incorrect rulings. Some of the rules about how the challenges can be used, though, make me wonder if the goal is really to get things right or if it’s just to appease the fans a little bit. A good example of this happened in the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays on Saturday.

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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 12PM: National Public Radio is a good news source; it is a fine explorer of American culture, but it has created its own little inbred linguistic world full of phrases and speech patterns that the Emperor can stand no more. We just realized that a large portion of our linguistic decrees have come from NPR, over the span of this column, which is usually written after a car ride into the Imperial Palace Offices, with the radio on. The NPR offenses?  The ubiquitous use of “srtiv” for “sort of” (and the use of “sort of,” at all, where the speaker is really trying to say “exactly”); the use of “So…” in response to a question, as if the speaker is trying to imply it is about time the interviewer shut up and allowed him to talk; the use of the phrase “on the ground,” stolen from the military, to mean “in the middle of the issue;” etc… (Check the Imperial archives for any number of examples.) Now, we must speak out against “at the end of the day.” See it work in this annoying, NPR-phrase-laden sentence: “So, at the end of the day, it’s about starting a conversation…” Why does everyone want to start a conversation at the end of the day? What’s wrong with a nice morning chat? And what do you mean, “it’s about”? What’s about what? Do you mean “we need to”? And while everyone is “having conversations,” who is out there actually trying to change things for the better? (George Carlin, the top-secret Emperor of the past [yes, we succeeded him] is rolling over in his grave. )

The Punishment: Any-freaking-hoo, over-users of the phrase “at the end of the day” will be “put to bed”. “Tucked-in,” as it were, by a muscular fellow in a black hood. (And we ain’t talkin’ no memory foam comfy bed, neither; though, the stretching motion of said bed could, conceivably, fix a back problem or two.)

Now, go forth and obey.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

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