Public School Follies

An interesting collection of horror stories from American public schools. The lead horror story focuses on history. Excerpts:

American students learn how World War II affected Japanese-Americans, blacks and women, but not much about the actual war, writes Jay Mathews in the Washington Post. Students tend to learn social history but not military history.

Tiffany Charles got a B in history last year at her Montgomery County high school, but she is not sure what year World War II ended. She cannot name a single general or battle, or the man who was president during the most dramatic hours of the 20th century.

Yet the 16-year-old does remember in some detail that many Japanese American families on the West Coast were sent to internment camps. “We talked a lot about those concentration camps,” she said.

The Post interviewed 76 teenagers. Two-thirds knew Japanese Americans had been interned during World War II. Only one-third could name a single World War II general; half could name a World War II battle.

On her blog, one teacher is frank about why history gets taught as it does:

I have much more time pressure and concern about teaching the curriculum since my kids have to take a standardized test. For my Advanced Placement kids, we do almost zilch on military history for any war we study. That is not part of the AP curriculum. . . . But the social history….that’s another story. They better know how every single war impacted women and families, blacks and other minorities, civil rights, the economy, the role of the federal government, and politics. Every single AP test will probably have a social history question. And, as I tell my kids, when you see “social” on an AP test, think women and blacks, and you’ll be able to come up with a good answer. And for World War II, throw in Japanese internment and the Zoot Suit riots, and you’re doing great. But for military history, they’ll need to take my elective on the Revolution and the Civil War to get some real military history other than a brief skimming of the surface.

Just more reason to homeschool.

Clash of the Atlantises

atlantisA German scientist named Dr. Rainer Kuehne believes satellite images have located the fabled sunken city of Atlantis–ironically, above ground in Spain.

An American researcher named Robert Sarmast believes maps of underwater geography have revealed the location of Atlantis–underwater off the coast of Cyprus.

Meanwhile, representatives of Stargate Command downplayed rumors that another American scientist–Dr. Daniel Jackson–had found an ancient, extraterrestrial tablet that located the lost city of Atlantis–in the distant Pegasus Galaxy.

More Wisdom From Peggy

A reader writes:

I love Peggy [Noonan]’s columns too.

One of my favorites is this one, entitled “Them: The One Group for Whom Liberals Have No Tolerance at All”:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002624

Thanks for the recommend!

This column involves a look at the insane, completely out of proportion persecution of smokers in so many places today–particularly from social liberals who pair their intolerance for smoking with tolerance for abortion and drug use. Among other things, Peggy focuses on the recent declaration by NYC Mayor Bloomberg that smoking will no longer be allowed in local bars.

No smoking in bars of all places?

Yes, I know it’s crazy, but California did the same thing state-wide a few years ago. I gather that bar business suffered significantly.

The way it is now, a man can’t go into an Irish pub and light his pipe. Now what is an Irish pub without pipe smoke?

John 6:44–Correcting An Old Mistake

Put up a file on the treatment of the Greek in John 6:44 in my old debate notes.

Excerpt:

When I looked up that passage and compared what I wrote with the Greek text, my response was to ask, “What the heck was I thinking? That analysis is unsupportable! That translation is horrendous! I would never accept something like that from one of my Greek students. Was I severely sleep deprived when I wrote that or something?”

YES! YES! YES! TinyURL & TinyURL Creator!

Okay, you know how horrendously long some URLs get? Like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=jimmyakincom-20&path=tg/detail/-/1888992050

You find yourself wanting to share what’s on the other end of such links with people (e.g,. in an e-mail), but the fact that this is such a bulky, high fiber link makes it prohibitively difficult to do so. What can you do?

Use TinyURL! Yes, that’s right, with TinyURL you can take a monstrously long link and turn it into a handy, dandy “my size” link, like this one:

http://tinyurl.com/3gpyu

This powerful petite will take you to exactly the same place as the bulky, high fiber link, but without all the hassle (try it!). Now you can be proud to put attractive links like this in your e-mails, on your web pages, among your personal notes–in place of those unsightly, prolix URLs that used to cause you so much frustration, worry, and embarrassment.

How do you get TinyURLs for the pages you want to link?

It’s simple, just copy the bloated link you want to put on an instant diet, go to TinyURL.com, paste it into the box at the top of the page, press the button, and bingo! You have a TinyURL to share with the world!

IT”S FREE!

To help you remember this new, must-use service, put TinyURL.com in your bookmarks or links bar.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL!

If you are a user of the excellent, open-source browswer Mozilla, get the TinyURL Creator plug-in, which lets you create TinyURLs without ever leaving the page you want to link!

Yes, now that TinyURL has been invented, the world is truly a better place.

YES! YES! YES! TinyURL & TinyURL Creator!

Okay, you know how horrendously long some URLs get? Like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=jimmyakincom-20&path=tg/detail/-/1888992050

You find yourself wanting to share what’s on the other end of such links with people (e.g,. in an e-mail), but the fact that this is such a bulky, high fiber link makes it prohibitively difficult to do so. What can you do?

Use TinyURL! Yes, that’s right, with TinyURL you can take a monstrously long link and turn it into a handy, dandy “my size” link, like this one:

http://tinyurl.com/3gpyu

This powerful petite will take you to exactly the same place as the bulky, high fiber link, but without all the hassle (try it!). Now you can be proud to put attractive links like this in your e-mails, on your web pages, among your personal notes–in place of those unsightly, prolix URLs that used to cause you so much frustration, worry, and embarrassment.

How do you get TinyURLs for the pages you want to link?

It’s simple, just copy the bloated link you want to put on an instant diet, go to TinyURL.com, paste it into the box at the top of the page, press the button, and bingo! You have a TinyURL to share with the world!

IT”S FREE!

To help you remember this new, must-use service, put TinyURL.com in your bookmarks or links bar.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL!

If you are a user of the excellent, open-source browswer Mozilla, get the TinyURL Creator plug-in, which lets you create TinyURLs without ever leaving the page you want to link!

Yes, now that TinyURL has been invented, the world is truly a better place.

AP: Man Bites Dog

Really! No kidding! I’m not making this up! An actual, real-word instance of a proverbial “Man Bites Dog” story!

Excerpt:

BEND, Ore. – A man suspected of assaulting his girlfriend set two fires and bit a dog on the head as he tried to escape from police, the authorities said. . . .

“He was given several opportunities to come out of the pipe and he basically signaled with his middle finger,” Stone said.

A police dog named Amor was sent in to retrieve Sernett and bit the suspect in the leg.

Sernett responded by lifting the dog off the ground and biting him on the head, Stone said.

AP: Man Bites Dog

Really! No kidding! I’m not making this up! An actual, real-word instance of a proverbial “Man Bites Dog” story!

Excerpt:

BEND, Ore. – A man suspected of assaulting his girlfriend set two fires and bit a dog on the head as he tried to escape from police, the authorities said. . . .

“He was given several opportunities to come out of the pipe and he basically signaled with his middle finger,” Stone said.

A police dog named Amor was sent in to retrieve Sernett and bit the suspect in the leg.

Sernett responded by lifting the dog off the ground and biting him on the head, Stone said.

Speaking of Lurch . . .

addams_familyI don’t know if anybody out there gets the cable network TVLand (a spinoff of Nick at Night). I suspect that I am one of about six people who do get it.

Well, if you’re one of the lucky six, this weekend they’re having an Addams Family marathon. That show is SO cool.

As a boy I loved it, though I could seldom catch it in syndication. I infinitely preferred it to The Munsters, which struck me as a gaudy, less creative knockoff of The Addams Family. In the years since, I’ve decided that I *do* like The Munsters, but The Addams Family still has a kind of sophistication and subtlety that the Munsters didn’t.

The Munsters were all established types of monsters: Hermann was a Frankenstein monster, Lily and Granpa were vampires, and Eddie was a werewolf. Then there was Cousin Marilyn, the drop-dead gorgeous ugly duckling of the family.

The Addamses, by contrast, defy categorization. Morticia is vaguely Vampira-like, but she isn’t a vampire. Lurch is vaguely Frankenstein monster-ish, but he isn’t a Frankenstein monster. Gomez and the children aren’t monstrous in appearance at all, and Uncle Fester, Cousin Itt, and Thing defy classification. The only Addams that approximates an established stereotype is Grandmama, who is a hag.

The humor on The Addams Family also is more subtle than that on The Munsters. The writers didn’t go for as many predictable jokes. Thus, for example, in one episode this weekend Morticia offered a visitor to the house a dish of brazed giraffe whereas Lily Munster might have offered a wolfsbane casserole or something. Brazed giraffe is odd and exotic without being predictable and invoking a cliche.

That seems to be the main difference between the two oddball families (both of whom got their serieses in the same year: 1964). The Munsters are a fun romp through established monster motifs (mostly derivative of the 1930s and ’40s Universal monster movies), while The Addams Family is a quirky, understated, never-quite-predictable look at a family from The Twilight Zone.

One thing both shows have going for them is wicked cool main title sequences. The Munsters’ theme has those hard-driving (for 1964) electric guitars and saxophones, while The Addams Family has the lively harpsichord and finger snapping.

Both families also are functional, despite their oddballness. The family members care about each other, the mother and father in each are in love, and everbody has a kind of quirky zest for life. Gomez Addams (played by John Astin, father of Sean Astin or “Samwise Gamgee” from The Lord of the Rings movies) in particular seems to be thoroughly enjoying life with a passion that sometimes borders on mania.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite aunts (who reminds me of a non-spooky, Texas-accented version of Morticia, if that makes any sense) once compared my sense of humor to that of Charles Addams, the cartoonist on whose work the series is based. Maybe that’s why I like the show so much.

Now if they’d just put it out on DVD. It only ran two seasons, so it wouldn’t take much work to put the whole thing out. Just two, one-season volumes. Since TVLand has started releasing DVD sets of the shows it broadcasts, maybe it’ll put this one out. If so, I’ll get my copies pronto!