Archive for January, 2018

Re-what

Some questions regarding the usage of certain words in English:

  • Shouldn’t one have taliated first, before one can re-taliate?
  • Also, something should have been novated earlier, in order to be re-novated.
  • And a dress hearsal should happen before a dress re-hearsal.
  • How does one linquish something? Once you have linquished something, then you can re-linquish it.

But all of this is stuff you should have membered back in grammar school.

Remember this, and be assured; Recall it to mind, you transgressors.

Isaiah 46:8

Dance Like

I am amused and perplexed by people who like to dance. I am not one of those people. And I think it’s presumptive of those who are dancy to think that everyone else must be.

My main example of this is the saying “Dance like no one is watching.” I’ve seen it on T shirts and on internet motivational posters. They assume that everyone secretly likes to dance and is held back by the fear of what people will think.

I don’t dance, whether I am by myself or in public. See me standing still? – that is how I dance when no one is watching.

and say, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”

Matthew 11:17

I Switched Back to Google

Regular readers of this blog will remember that I switched over to Bing for my default search engine around Thanksgivingtime.

This past weekend, I wanted to cross-check something so I went specifically to Google and searched, and I was surprised to see that they reinstated the feature that had disappeared at Thanksgiving.

So my reason for not using Google does not exist anymore, and it does give better results than Bing. For example, I searched for a football game on Google, and it gave me news articles, video options, relevant items on Twitter, and general information about the upcoming game. I searched for the same thing on Bing, and half of the results looked to be illegal streams of the game.

And they said to her, “No, but we will surely return with you to your people.”

Ruth 1:10

All-Haiku Bowl Results, 2017

Okay, okay, it is 2018 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2017 because they match with the 2017 predictions made in 2016 for the 2017 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2017”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.
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Ticket Monster

My wife saw that the Harlem Globetrotters would be in our arena soon, and she thought it would be fun to take the kids. Tickets were about $20 apiece, so that seemed reasonable for a fun break from the winter weather.

image of expected ticket prices from Ticketmaster

My wife was looking at the tickets and picking out a good section, but I stopped her when I noticed it was through Ticketmaster. They were a major reason I left my last email address – could not get them to stop sending me email, so I abandoned that email address. They’re probably still spamming it. I wanted to setup a temporary email for this transaction, so we could delete it and be free from Ticketmaster spam after our event.

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Internet Learning

My wife showed me a video that she found via social media. It was a plea for internet access for all students, something like bridging the digital divide. It’s a good intent, but a bad way to reach the goal.

The goal, I presume, is better education for lower-income children. Their plan (whoever “they” was) is more computers and internet. Before I get into that, though, let me describe the video.

There were two tables of several students each. The tables were separated by a sheet or screen so the two groups couldn’t see each other. One moderator read a question aloud and the first table to answer correctly would get a point.

One table had laptops and internet, whereas the other table had encyclopedias. The results were, of course, dramatic. The moderator would read a question, and a couple of seconds later the laptop table would shout their answer. The video would then show the annoyed faces of the encyclopedia table. Another question, and another answer from the laptop table, followed by dismay from the encyclopedia table. Question, answer, frustration.

Then they removed the screen from between the two tables and the encyclopedia table was relieved to see it was a setup with the other table being given an advantage.

The video then had someone give an impassioned speech on how students can’t learn if they don’t have the internet.

My response: they’re going down the wrong road.

Sure, the internet lets you look up things quicker. But the goal of the people behind this video is presumably not quicker answers to trivia. I’m also going to presume their goal is not simply more funding either. Rather, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say their goal is better education, with the goal of better education being to improve the lives of disadvantaged kids.

The kids who got the questions right – what did they learn? How much processing did their brains do? It seemed to me like they were plugging in a question and spitting out an answer. I did not see how the learning was happening.

If this were a homework assignment, and one group had encyclopedias at home and one group had the internet, the encyclopedia group would have taken longer to complete the assignment, but their education would have advanced by that amount.

Learning is like most everything else in life – you get out of it what you put into it. If there is little effort required to produce the answers needed, then there was little learning involved. No pain, no gain – only we are talking about mental muscles instead of physical muscles.

That is not to say that we should make homework more difficult than necessary, but if the goal is learning then the process should involve thinking. Plus some memorization, but that’s another topic.

A scoffer seeks wisdom and finds none, But knowledge is easy to one who has understanding.

Proverbs 14:6

Movie Ratings

It’s fun being a dad – I get to answer all sorts of questions about life from those little growing minds.

For instance, my grade-schoolers asked about movie ratings. What does PG mean?
My answer: that means the movie is Pretty Good.

What about rated G?
That means it’s a Great movie.

What about R?
That’s a Rotten movie – it’s bad for you.

How about PG-13?
It’s Pretty Good if you’re at least 13 years old.


I still don’t like the discontinuity among the ratings. Why does one have an age associated with it and the others do not? Either they should all have ages, or none. Make it consistent.

Example:

Current / Non-Age / Age
G G 1+
PG PG 6+
PG-13 T 13+
R R 18+

The T there is for Teen, in case you were wondering.

I will set no worthless thing before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not fasten its grip on me.

Psalm 101:3