Sometimes the world is terrible
“Here’s what else is new and exciting (or terrible) in money: there is real poverty among the soldiers who fight our wars. There are fist fights to get children into $30,000 a year kindergartens and pre-schools in the right neighborhoods in Manhattan. There are 40 million Americans without health care insurance. There are almost 40 million baby boomers with no savings for retirement. There is a long waiting list for Bentleys at the dealership in Beverly Hills.
There are soldiers’ wives selling blood to buy toys for their kids. There is a man selling non-functioning body armor who threw a $10 million Bat Mitzvah for his daughter.”
From The American Spectator.
Reporting
I just finished my Term 1 reports. I wish all reports were this easy… first and third term, we do tick box reports, basically: choose from a scale of 1 to 5 about students’ organisation, achievement, general conduct etc, as well as ‘specific concerns’ – lateness to class, deadlines not met, and so on. Doesn’t really tell parents much, but ever so much easier to complete. Then you have to figure out whose parents you really want to see at parent/teacher interviews – those you know won’t turn up anyway, and those for whom you have to look like you’re making the effort so that just in case, you can say you did your best…. And of course, I know there will be some parents who want to come and hear good things about their kids, and I’m fine with that – my parents were like that. In fact, I think by the time I finished school, the only reason they went to the interviews was to catch up with my teachers, and not to hear about me at all.
Reporting is probably the thing I hate about teaching. I don’t like having to make such qualitative and quantitative judgements, and actually commit them to paper for scrutiny by parental types. it’s way too much responsibility.
Reading at the moment
1. Just finished Lady Friday, by Garth Nix.
2. History of Spice, by … someone…
3. the Theory and Practice of Communism, by RN Carew Hunt
Pretty much sums up my reading habits, really… fantasy, history, food, and technology.
That’s me.
Convergence2
I’m going to ConVergence2!
Wheeeee!!
BBC History: Feb 2007
Since the March edition arrived today, I thought I should finally finish the Feb edition. Some of the highlights:
An overview of the Basque issue – I’ve been fascinated by Basques since I was at school; I loved Mark thingo’s book about how Basques changed the world.
Two contrasting articles about the Suffragettes – one that essentially argued that they were essentially terrorists, and they didn’t have much popular support; the other saying that view is a load of bollocks. As a chick, I found it troubling to have the women who I thought had gained me my right to vote might be terrorists. One woman’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter… I’m not sure where I stand on this issue now. I definitely don’t hold with violence at any time, and never have, but the question of whether violence was necessary to gain suffrage… we’ll never know, I do certainly approve of exploding (tee hee) too-rosy mythology about historical events, especially ones so recent and still so pertinent.
The article on ‘the ghost that convicted the bishop’ was a bizarre look into the mindset of at some people in the seventeenth century… and a rather dismal look at the state of the church.
One of the big article is about Little Bighorn, and the possibility that one main reason why Custer was defeated was because his deputy Capt Benteen hated his guts. I am a military history baby, and the detailed stuff about directions etc really don’t work for me (the map helped a bit), but the stuff about how the two men interacted was quite interesting.
Another big article was about Klaus Fuchs, who passed nuclear secrets from the Anglo-American research he was involved in onto the USSR. Complements a BBC series, which hopefully the ABC will pick up sometime; very interesting because it mostly looked at his motivations and attitudes.
Two articles about Tudors – 1534, when Henry VIII officially decalred his ’empire’, and the consequences of this for the entire British Isles and Ireland… and a quick look at how Elizabeth I treated Dudley, and how she was regarded because of it, compared with Catherine of Russia and Potemkin, and Anne Stuart and the Churchills.
Much fun!
Tshirts
My Threadless tshirts turned up today! Yay! I got a Communist Party tshirt – which I’ve been hankering after ever since my bro got one; a Funkalicious one, with a spaceman carrying a boombox; and one that says “Books are good for you,” with a dude eating a book on the front.
Very, very excited.
I have emphysema
Nah, not really; but I sounded like it last night. Head cold moved to chest cold, as they do, and of course it flared my asthma. Which is usually only annoying, but I was huffing and puffing like a grampus* all night, and I got maybe a couple of hours of sleep if I’m lucky. Because the inhaler I was sucking on turned out basically to have no drugs in it – I think I was really only getting propellant. Lovely.
*What is a grampus? I have no idea. I believe it’s some sort of marine critter, maybe a whale? – but I don’t know for sure. I’ve just read that phrase somewhere.
Clean coal?
Clean coal = cold fusion.
Just my 2c.
Ivanhoe
If the 1997 (?) adaptation of Ivanhoe is accurate, then I know a few things about Walter Scott:
1. He didn’t like the Templars.
2. He didn’t much like most of his characters.
3. He was a vicious old bugger who liked inflicting, or at least imagining, pain on other people.
I really enjoyed the portrayal of John. Young, childish, scared, weak – with a streak of ruthless cruelty. The scene with Richard, John and Eleanor is hilarious, with her treating her sons like children and ordering them around… just a pity that it was so ahistorical, since Richard was her favourite and she would have had problems with Richard spending little time in England in favour of Aquitaine, as he did. Which brings in the other ahistorical bit, with Richard and John both being abe to communicate with the Saxons very easily… unlikely, since neither of them spoke English, and I doubt that many of the Saxons – the peasants, anyway – spoke Norman. But, tut; so many people make these assumptions.
I really enjoyed Blois Guibert’s character – he was so very bad, and then to twist his heart in such a way as to make him fall for Rebecca was a terrible, tragic thing. And Christopher Lee as the Grand Master – superb!
I bought a second-hand copy of the book a while ago… not sure I can read it any time soon, now.
Nachos Libre
We got this on DVD for Christmas. I had thought it looked dubious in the movies… and we didn’t finish it tonight. We got about 2/3 of the way through and then gave up. It’s just silly. And not particularly funny, nor original. The best thing was the sidekick – he was good.
Randomly Yours, Alex 