Tag: lame

Zip It, Idiot

microphoneReceived a text from the Sib late Thursday morning.

Jesse Jackson is an idiot.

Yeah, that seemed to be true. A page 4 story in the Post had alerted me over my morning coffee to what would be the “news” of the day–bigger than the floods (which led the cable news to loop through the same images of water in the streets and not too much in commentary, I mean it was too much water, what’s to say?) but a little smaller than Imus (cable-fest big contrast with the old white guy versus young black women with some of the same commentators).

So, we got someone making a disparaging comment about a rival/peer. Makes you kind of hate recordings, because if Jesse had made the comment without the salacious evidence, there would be NO STORY. As it was, it was a non-story that spun and spun and spun until it finally sputtered all over itself.

Colby King from the WaPo got it right this morning when he wrote

The reverend brother was simply fat-mouthing….Jesse Jackson was sitting on the TV set next to a brother talking trash, selling wolf tickets, being verbally aggressive when he knew full well that he wasn’t about to do anything but dis Obama (presumably) behind his back.

Hey, that’s not news. It’s what people do. It’s me talking about my boss doing something dumb. Or someone who calls me boss (or parent) talking trash about me. So what. It portends nothing of importance. And that he got “caught” just causes group pain as we relive and rehash, rewind and recoil the non-story.

This fake drama that doesn’t improve big city education, provide appropriate medical care for soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, or help us remember the discussion we almost had after Katrina.

Yeah, Jesse is an idiot, for feeding the idiot media for our idiot consumption.

Posted on by docthink 0

Blinded Me By Science

I hate science fair.

I used to think that I liked it. That was when we were at a school that didn’t have one.

I used to think that Science Fair was to learn about science, do something with your hands and brain, and then learn to communicate about your findings. Be creative. Have fun. We didn’t do science fair at my school. I thought it would be great.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

First, science projects are lame. My favorite science was chemistry. Blowing things up. Burning chemicals. Seeing the colors. Smelling the esters. Building a distilling apparatus and having some powdery substance at the end. Or, even better, separating liquids. Connecting the Lewis Dot Structures. It was a wonderful, hands-on thing.

But you look for science fair projects and they are in two categories–boring biology projects or building things.

The first is–well–boring. Growing plants. Growing germs. Growing plankton. Nothing blows up. Great for little kids.

The second has a huge cool potential. Except that if you are building something–like a circuit–you might actually learn something. And that is NOT the purpose of a science fair project.

A successful science fair project has four main ingredients.

  1. A graph. You need to measure something so you can graph it. You can’t measure something you build.
  2. A hypothesis. You need to work the Scientific Method. This is the Holy Grail of science fair. #1 is directly related.
  3. A teacher. The teacher has to be of no help, patronizing, mean, and anti-intellectual.
  4. Much yelling. There are absolutely NO good science fair projects. There are no projects of any interest whatsoever to the kid. No matter how you try to sell it.

So after not picking a project, complaining about the lack of support from #3, and refusing to do work. And after going around and around through crummy web sites with science projects perfect for 7-9 year olds when we need an high school honors level project AND a middle school project. And after going through all the ideas with potential and recognizing time and again there was nothing to frickin’ MEASURE, the science fair projects have been selected.

The abstracts have been written. The high-level procedures have been done. Some of the materials have been ordered. After all the shock and awe to get this far, it seems like we should be done.

But then you look at building the experiment, trying to control the insurgent students (aka the 15-year old and the 12-year old) who at times seem intent on sabotaging their own best interests, and a look at the additional resources–time, brain, and materials–required for success, I almost feel like pulling out now. But no, I need to be fully committed to see these projects through their bitter ends.

Maybe I should shut up. At least our experiments have a good chance of success–it could be worse.

See related Science Un-Fair.

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Posted on by docthink 0