Thursday, August 27, 2009

Chez nuts, fan boys, yabbos and pills

So we sat around chezzing last night and came up with bupkes on Sept-Oct. Okay, not exactly bupkes, but close enough. The thing is, standardized testing seems to exist as an attempt to provide equality. While it could conceivably fail to do so because a particular test is flawed, I really don’t believe in CT arguments that would claim that all testing in inherently flawed and unjust. I mean, people, it just ain’t true. If you really believe that an algebra test discriminates against anyone because of race, gender, creed or color, your issue isn’t with the test but with algebra itself. (Unless women aren’t good at equations with both X and Y in them because of their chromosomes? You know, that would explain the gender gap in math if, in fact, the gender gap in math wasn’t a myth.) This shifts the question to whether algebra, or any subject you may care to name, is intrinsically flawed as a study in secondary school. The tests seem rather incidental to the question at that point. Anyhow, no immediate hooks for serious discussion of the issue arose as we sat around relatively undisturbed by Tik (pronounced teek, who seemed much more interested last week in attacking coaches than he did this week in attacking students. He is a cat of discriminating tastes. We will attempt the same again next week. I’ll do some more research myself in the interim, for what it’s worth. Anyhow, it was nice to tentatively get back into the swing of (debate) things again. The season slowly clicks into place.

I noticed yesterday that this blog has a Facebook fan page. Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that. I always feel so friendless on Fb compared to, say, O’C, who has more friends than Carter has little liver pills (now there’s a line I haven’t heard since my great-grandmother died). Of course, I hardly ever befriend anybody unless they keep getting recommended to me by the Fb software and I get tired of looking at their face and I befriend them to make the recommendation go away. Which, I think, is not the point of social networking, but what can I say?

(Two weeks till the MHLW. Have you signed up yet? What are you waiting for, you yabbo????)

For those of you who track this sort of thing, I think I have finally gotten back into the normal pacing of existence following my northwest vacation. This one really threw me off: the DJ is just too busy and demanding these days. Which, of course, just engenders the need for more vacations, followed by more displacement and busier and more demanding DJ days. But I’ll give up vacations when O’C gives up Carter’s Little Liver Pills. I like having the break. I need that break. It’s just the mess the break leaves behind that’s the problem. So it goes.

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