Not a Potted Plant

I have grown so frustrated with Twitter that I’m about to uninstall it from every device I own. I’ve noticed that it seems to run in a diurnal cycle: in the morning it is dominated by liberals who urge and exhort that a vote for Gary Johnson is really a vote for Mitt Romney… vote Obama! Then as the day waxes old and the sun’s chariot sinks below the horizon the conservatives gradually move in and with equal if not greater fervor take over and the opposite slogan displaces the morning: a vote for Johnson is a vote for Barack Obama… no more years, vote Romney!

I reject both brands of sloganeering utterly. Continue Reading →

Four years ago I wrote the following on Hit Coffee. My prediction going into election day was that the race would be slightly closer than the polls suggested. However, when I woke up on election day I changed my mind and determined that it would be the landslide everyone had been waiting for*. With the election’s ultimate result already determined, and with more than a little apprehension about the presumptive winner, I had no real reason to watch other than (a) that’s what I do on election day and (b) the sense that it was history in the making.

I didn’t expect to see Jesse Jackson with tears of joy in his eyes. I didn’t expect to be happy for Jesse Jackson**. But there it was. A history not just in the vague sense, but in a way that was real in a way that I had never fully appreciated until I saw what I can only describe as elated disbelief. They knew as well as I did that this was what was going to happen. But it was, I can only imagine, so much different to actually watch it happen. He’d won. He’d won an overwhelming victory. Though Hit Coffee was at the time a no-politics zone, I nonetheless penned the following post

Undone

When I was in high school, Mr. Hiller, my government teacher, asked every girl in the class to stand up.

Then he asked every student who was not white and whose parents weren’t white to stand up. After some looking at one another, most did.

He then asked everybody whose last name ends in a vowel other than “e” to stand up. They did so.

Then he said requested that everyone in the class that is not a protestant to stand up. The couple Jewish kids in the class and a Catholic or two stood up. It was when he said that anyone that had just stood up on the basis that they’re Catholic can sit down if their parents are millionaires that I knew what he was getting at.

Then, to the three-quarters of the class standing up, he said, “You will never be president when you grow up.”

Barack Obama has been a better president than I thought he would be. If I had it to do over again, I would have voted for him (owing at least in part to McCain’s temperament). I’m not voting for him this time around, either, but mostly because I am not in a competitive state, the Republicans nominated someone I find tolerable, and the Libertarians nominated someone I can actually support.

My hope when he was elected in the first place is that I would regret not having voted for him. Mission accomplished. My hope is that in his second term – assuming everything goes as expected – is that he does such a bang-up job that I have a similar regret in four years time.

* – This frequently happens. I go to sleep the night before election day thinking one thing and wake up with a feeling that I was wrong. Sometimes the shift is to the Republican (2004) and sometimes to the Democrat (2000, 2008). We’ll see if that happens again this year.

** – You might be thinking “Woah boy, a white guy with a chip on his shoulder about Jesse Jackson.” I do have a chip on my shoulder about Jesse Jackson, but in the sense that he is a liberal black politician. I don’t have a comparable chip with regard to Al Sharpton, for example. There’s a story behind this that I may write about in the future.

I believe in one sense that this election is closer than a lot of folks around here, in that those arguing that it was never close cause the state polls and projections persistently leaned in Obama’s favor were off-base. It’s moot now because I agree with the projections insofar as Romney never sealed the deal and the last-minute national movement appears to be in Obama’s direction. I consider the likelihood of a reverse-verdict to be greater, but I consider the greatest likelihood to be an Obama win that will not come down to the wire.

I believe Obama will win the popular vote by somewhere between 1.5% and 2%. If it’s closer to the latter, you can probably flip Florida into the Obama column (maybe you can anyway…).

Having said all of that, I do want to submit something else: There’s nothing wrong with a degree of poll-skepticism. They’re probably right. This year, I believe they are. But one of these years, they will be wrong. The likelihood of getting caught between shifting demographics, last-minute undecideds, cell phones*, and lower response rates will make polling increasingly difficult and the accommodations made for these realities will either fail to compensate or will create their own problems.

The polls have failed us before, and they’ll fail us again. Improved scientific technique seems likely to me to have a hard time compensating for various problems that will increasingly aggravate.

There are ways that this may favor Republicans in polling, and ways that it may favor Democrats. It depends on where the problem occurs, and how the pollsters respond to it.

My hope is that when it occurs, it will be something that brings a 9% margin down to a 5% or vice-versa and not something that flips an election. My belief that it could is one of the reasons I have been relatively uptight this cycle on the subject.

* – Yes, I am aware that cell phones are included in many polls. However, response rates from cell phones are likely to be lower and cell phone numbers are less likely to be up-to-date.

-{This post was ported over from Hit Coffee}-

John T. Tierney gives the case against AP tests:

AP courses are not, in fact, remotely equivalent to the college-level courses they are said to approximate. Before teaching in a high school, I taught for almost 25 years at the college level, and almost every one of those years my responsibilities included some equivalent of an introductory American government course. The high-school AP course didn’t begin to hold a candle to any of my college courses. My colleagues said the same was true in their subjects.

The traditional monetary argument for AP courses — that they can enable an ambitious and hardworking student to avoid a semester or even a year of college tuition through the early accumulation of credits — often no longer holds. Increasingly, students don’t receive college credit for high scores on AP courses; they simply are allowed to opt out of the introductory sequence in a major. And more and more students say that’s a bad idea, and that they’re better off taking their department’s courses.

The scourge of AP courses has spread into more and more high schools across the country, and the number of students taking these courses is growing by leaps and bounds. Studies show that increasing numbers of the students who take them are marginal at best, resulting in growing failure rates on the exams. The school where I taught essentially had an open-admissions policy for almost all its AP courses. I would say that two thirds of the students taking my class each year did not belong there. And they dragged down the course for the students who did.

The AP program imposes “substantial opportunity costs” on non-AP students in the form of what a school gives up in order to offer AP courses, which often enjoy smaller class sizes and some of the better teachers. Schools have to increase the sizes of their non-AP classes, shift strong teachers away from non-AP classes, and do away with non-AP course offerings, such as “honors” courses. These opportunity costs are real in every school, but they’re of special concern in low-income school districts.

To me, the most serious count against Advanced Placement courses is that the AP curriculum leads to rigid stultification — a kind of mindless genuflection to a prescribed plan of study that squelches creativity and free inquiry. The courses cover too much material and do so too quickly and superficially. In short, AP courses are a forced march through a preordained subject, leaving no time for a high-school teacher to take her or his students down some path of mutual interest. The AP classroom is where intellectual curiosity goes to die.

Michael Williams talks about his own experience, concurring.

I personally do not have any experience in the way of taking AP courses. As far as my school district was concerned, I was closer to “remedial” than “advanced” despite my being a top performer in most of the (non-honors) classes I took. In middle school, my math teacher inquired about putting me advanced math, but was denied on the grounds that I had been tagged a near-remedial student (I was actually making mostly A’s and the rest B’s at the time, but that wasn’t what they were looking at). Honors classes were out of reach in high school, and AP classes moreso. The colleges took a different view, and I was being recruited by a directional school specifically for their honors college. Southern Tech, where I did attend, accepted me unconditionally into its Honors College.

When I got to Southern Tech, they had me take a placement course. This wasn’t for college credit, but was for bypassing the sequence as Tierney mentions. I scored into the highest English and Math courses, though it turned out not to matter: The Honors College required that I start at the bottom floor in English and the College of Industrial Technology required that I take specifically designed “technical math” courses, which were not appreciably different than the sophomore and junior high school classes I did take. I could see why I otherwise would have tested out of them.

I am, on the whole, glad that I did not take AP classes. It may not have done me any good for math and my Honors English classes were awesome. The only ones I would have wanted to test out of are those that I might not have (namely, science) and ones I would have (Social Studies, English) are ones I was glad to take at the collegiate level.

Tierney points to what I consider to be some solid reasons why AP classes have gone off-track, as far as that goes. On the other hand, some of the same arguments can be used against tracking (Honors/Standard/Remedial/etc) and I am a fan of those. The bit about intellectual curiosity comes is interesting because my impression from my friends – many of whom took honors classes – were that it was much more freewheeling than the classes I was taking. Without thinking about it, I would have guessed AP classes would have been the same. But if the class itself is geared towards preparing for a specific test, I suppose that makes sense. It does seem a little bit odd to me that the best teachers would be teaching these classes, though. I’d have thought that teaching to a test is something that they would avoid (and, along those lines, that non-AP honors classes were considered better because the framework was not as rigid).

On this page, Will and I have an ongoing, gentleman’s disagreement about the proper way to measure the election. I think the state-by-state polling is a better way of looking at what the outcome will be, and Will points to the national polls. Here, we are pleasant and civilized about such things. On Twitter, not so much. I can’t read Twitter anymore.

After all, this disagreement was at the root of what looks in retrospect like a little bout of “media bias rage” from the rightosphere that took place yesterday and the day before, aimed at statistician Nate Silver and his invaluable blog, fivethirtyeight. Apparently math and poll results are somehow biased in favor of Democrats.

Now, if I’m wrong, then the race is too close to call because the national polls are all very close and most are within their margins of error. But if I’m right, then Nate Silver’s pithy justification for giving President Obama such high odds for re-election is dead on:

Obama’s ahead in Ohio.

As far as I can see, there isn’t much more to think about than these four words. If you look at the states where it just plain isn’t competitive anymore, you get Obama with a foundation of 253 electoral votes† to Romney’s 206.‡

The Electoral College math is simple from there. Governor Romney must win both Florida and Ohio in order to be the next President. But he is trailing in every five out of six of those swing states. He’s more likely to get Florida than Obama, but of the others, really, only Colorado is competitive. If Romney manages to win every one of these six states but Ohio, he still loses in the electoral college, by two votes.

What I think will actually happen is that Romney will win Florida and Colorado, and lose Iowa, Virginia, New Hampshire, and fatally, Ohio. That result is 294-244 in favor of the President’s re-election. I can’t say I’m terribly exercised about this. While there is lots — lots — to criticize about President Obama and I’m averse to the ‘six year curse’ by which all two-term Presidents get bogged down in their sixth continuous year of administration, I can’t see President Romney doing any better on the things that I both care about and that the President can influence — other than Supreme Court nominees. Here, I’d expect Obama to nominate Justices more liberal than himself, or Romney to nominate Justices more conservative than himself. And the fact of the matter is that except for the new Second Amendment cases I expect to see percolating up over the next ten years or so, the kinds of Justices Obama would nominate would be more expansive in their interpretation of individual rights than the kinds of Justices Romney would nominate.

By the way, in what I’ve called the most interesting Congressional race of the year, Arizona’s Ninth District, there seem to be hints that Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is narrowly leading Republican Vernon Parker, and more than a million and a half dollars were spent on that race last week alone, with that same amount of spending currently underway in the last days of the campaign. And that money is paying for some very questionable commercials. The anti-Sinema ads look more hamfisted and stink of tonedeaf desparation more than the anti-Parker ad, in my opinion. But I can’t find good polling data anywhere, unless I pay for it, and come on, I’m not that interested in something that in four days, we’ll have a definitive result for anyway.

And with that, I may well find it within my willpower not to blog about politics any more until the election. So there.

___________________________
† California, Connecticut, D.C., Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin.
‡ Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming.

You know those rude jerks that keep a Bluetooth earpiece in their ear even when they’re not using it? I’m one of them. To me, it falls under the rubric of being the change I want to see in the world. Not that people should be rude jerks, but that Bluetooth earpieces should be normalized.

Also, I forget it’s there.

In the alternate universe in “Fringe” they wear their variants of earpieces much of the time. Which is, in my mind, as it should be. Until that day, I will take it out when social circumstance demands it (I’m not going to wear it to a job interview, or a family/social gathering), but when I’m shopping running errands, I am more inclined to leave it in than most.

Recently, Clancy was looking over the medical records for Lain. Much of it was pretty straightforward. There was a comment about me, however. They referred to my having “abnormal bonding” with Lain. It was noted that the football game was on the TV and that I had the earpiece in my ear.

The football game was indeed on, but I was at best barely interested in it. I didn’t even bother to have the volume on. With regard to the earpiece, guilty as charged I suppose. I most likely wasn’t listening to anything if she was awake and in my arms, but it was indeed there and sends certain unfortunate signals.

I won’t lie and say that the comment didn’t sting a little bit. I also recognize that whoever wrote that was merely doing their job and putting down their observations. So I don’t hold a grudge. Not towards the nurse. Somewhat towards society.

We have two ears. Having one of them have an earpiece just doesn’t strike me as problematic. If I’m listening to anything, I’ll put my “one sec!” finger up and turn it off or simply take it out of my ear (and go back and locate wherever I was on the track).

The iPhone 5 got some remarks about the earjack being on the bottom. This is old hat for me, since my previous phone had the jack there. My current one has it on top, though I actually still put the phone in upside down due to the placement of the volume and power buttons. It really doesn’t make much of a difference, in the grander scheme of things.

What was missing from the whole discussion is that cell phones shouldn’t go into your pocket at all. Cell phones are why cell phone holsters were invented.

So yeah, in addition to being a rude jerk, I am also an incurable nerd. I wear a cell phone holster. Unapologetically.

But think about it, why shouldn’t we? My pocket real estate is important. Nevermind that phones have become increasingly slender and small, that’s one more object to rifle through when trying to find something else in your pocket. Meanwhile, on the holster, it has its own place.

Between smartphones, tablets, the occasional need for pens, and even Bluetooth earpieces if we’re not supposed to keep them in our ear, we need to rethink belts. Heck, these days we ought to be wearing utility belts with all of these things and anti-shark batspray (because you never know…).

I doubt I will ever get my utility belt, but the earpieces may come along with Google Glasses as more normalized behavior. It doesn’t seem to me that it would be that hard to add an earpiece to one of those things.

In the meantime, I will just have to keep an eye out for Bluetooth earpieces that look vaguely like hearing aids or something.

So far, mommy, baby, and daddy are doing well.

I am not nearly as tired as I expected to be. That’s partly because we have a reasonably quiet baby. It’s also because a whole lot of the burden has been falling on Clancy despite my best efforts.

I can get up at three in the morning, and I can change her diapers, wipe the gunk out of her eyes, and give her to mommy, but I can’t feed her yet. Breastfeeding has been something of a challenge thus far. At first a real challenge – more on that and my more critical view of “lactivists” in a later post, perhaps – but now that the milk is coming and the baby knows how to extract it, we’re still having a bit of trouble adding some efficiency to the process (c’mon, Lain, it’s feeding time, stop falling asleep!). We haven’t gotten to the point where she accepts any alternate vehicle for the milk (we’re not supposed to use a bottle yet, and the syringe stopped working), so there’s only so much I can do.

Adding to the pressure on Clancy’s end is that she is under some intense pressure to get current on her paperwork for the office. She was planning to knock that out in the weekend prior to Lain’s scheduled c-section (the last thing she wanted to do was spend her first two weeks of maternity leave completing paperwork), but Lain did not abide by this plan. Her plan was sleep, feed, eat, sleep, feed, eat, and so on, but the tasks seem to bleed into one another and it’s been really difficult for her to take time out of her day and do that. I’ve driven her too and from the office, but obviously there’s not much more I can do to help her than that.

Adding to my more marginal pressure is that the landlord’s informed us that we need to vacate the garage so that they can tear it down. We’re sure Lain is going to love all of the demolition and construction noise. So I’ve been spending my spare time cleaning out the garage and moving everything to the basement.

My brother Mitch was in town over the weekend. He wanted to be a part of the event. It was really, really nice having him here. We’re trying to sell him on the prospect of having children (note: he’s not averse in the same way that averse)

My mother-in-law also came up, and is still here, and her help has proven to be invaluable. Both in helping us take care of the baby and in getting the house in more working order.

Aside from all that, there have been a few other stresses. The first was an emergency trip to Umatilla due to concerns about her pulse and circulation. So I learned what a “pediatric cardiologist” is. Everything turned up aces on that, thank heavens. The second trip taught me what a “pediatric orthopaedist” is. She has a bit of a loose hip. Lain is in a harness now (think of it like a cast to re-set a broken arm). It’s entirely curable, but nobody likes to see their newborn in a harness. The last thing is that she has unresponsive tearducts. This typically resolves itself, but it means that we end up wiping a lot of goop from her eyes.

From my little corner of California to Fresno, where I have work for a couple of days and where I may well have to try a long-cause jury trial in December, is a four-and-a-half hour drive up the Central Valley on either Highway 99 or Interstate 5, pretty much a dealer’s choice as to time. So let’s review the good things about this particular drive.

That’s about what I’m looking forward to. It’s going to be Las Uvas De La Ira out there. For this, I get to be away from my wife for the night. The things I do for my clients.