11.29.06
Posted in Personal at 9:16 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Joe’s perpetual fear of displeasing his parents
I remember going to Disney World when I was fifteen, just young enough to enjoy the fun without getting too wise to the con. Before the trip there was a feature about ‘Gay Days’ on the news, which apparently coincided with our trip. There was some rearranging of which parks to visit on which days, specifically to avoid Gay Days. I know that parents often want to wait to discuss certain issues until children are ‘old enough,’ whatever that means, but surely the existence of gay people isn’t one of these things. I hope that it wasn’t simple disgust with homosexuality that changed our trip plans, because that would just be far too disheartening.
Either way, though, I disagree with Mom and Dad’s decision to make last minute changes to avoid Gay Days. There are quite a few things that I disagree with my parents about but, like Gay Days, have never discussed with them. For some reason I have a deep and abiding fear of conflicting with my parents, especially with my father. It’s not just a normal aversion to confrontation - I get unsettled and have even made myself sick thinking about this stuff. I have vivid dreams of getting thrown out of the house (and I don’t even live there any more). My dad’s yelling about ‘deciding what kind of person you want to be,’ and my mom is doing a characteristically bad job of holding back her emotion. I really don’t think anything like this would happen if my parents suddenly knew all the things that I believe that they believe are wrong, but it doesn’t make me feel any less ill. What’s wrong with me?
My friends-who-are-the-progeny-of-divorced-parents (FWAPDP) will surely roll their eyes and say ‘Boo-hoo Joe’ to this, but I think that a lot of my fear stems from the fact that my family life has always been good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard my parents have an actual fight, and I’ve certainly never seen them yell at each other. My dad’s usually a very calm guy, but his eruptions of anger are such a departure that they scare me deeply. I think I’m just always waiting for an explosion like that; I fear that it’s always just ready to go off. Consequently, I minimize anything that I think my parents will find ‘bad’ and play up things that they like. You might call it good marketing, but it feels dishonest.
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11.15.06
Posted in Personal at 11:20 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Crazy Man Reminds Me What I Hated About School
John Taylor Gatto is basically the wild man of American education. As a student who has come out of the system loving science, loving learning, loving self-motivation, reading this interview with him is making me rethink my experience of the educational system.
Gatto is a big advocate of student-directed learning, the sort of thing where the student does almost all of the work synthesizing their own concepts. That’s a huge, huge part of enjoying learning. Actually THINKING and creating new concepts is what gives us those ‘Aha!’ moments that bring the world to life for a moment. Sure, there’s a certain pleasure in being able to recall trivia, but the real pleasure in knowing those things is the ability to think about them and what their effects are. Knowing all the kings of England is much more fun when you know how that helped create modern English society, for example.
A lot of Gatto’s thoughts would basically bring lesson planning as it’s known today to an end. Time would not be nearly so managed as it is today, because the student’s motivation would propel learning rather than needing a teacher to tug them along. I know teachers hate making lesson plans. I know students hate following them. I loathed the phrase ‘We have to get through this today,’ because it was usually when a teacher was moving away from something interesting to something rote and boring.
So, educators of the world, rise up! Guide students instead of pounding knowledge in, and I think the returns will follow.
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11.13.06
Posted in Personal at 3:16 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: The World Turns to My Liking
Kat often jokes that the first thing I ask myself upon seeing some new electronics is ‘Yes, but can it run Linux?’ While that’s not entirely true, there is a large kernel of truth in it. I’m a sucker for open-source software, I just love having the ability to tinker with anything, recompile, analyze, break it if I mess up. It’s just all around an enticing proposition.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you what may be, just maybe, the best device ever made for me:
It’s called the GP2X. It’s from Korea by way of Britain, and it runs on a modified Linux. It plays games, movies, and music. It displays photos. It’s programmable, networkable, heck, you can even telnet into it. It can hook up to your TV to play video files on a bigger, better screen if you want. Also, and this is extremely important, it runs MAME. That means that it will run almost any great arcade game that you can find a ROM for. Oh, sweet smell of success. It’s only US $189, too. I’m tempted to just sink some money into it and buy one, start hacking with the SDK that they include to make myself some fun little display programs. I will exercise restraint, though. I’ve already spent far too much money this year.
But it’s just … so … cool!
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11.10.06
Posted in Personal at 6:53 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: In case you forgot about our terrible weather.
In less than four hours today, one inch of slush buildup. Tonight’s low: 30
That makes for one awful, awful street situation tomorrow. I didn’t even see any salt trucks on my commute. Bad News Bears.
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Posted in Personal at 12:30 am by Joe Blubaugh
This is the mascot for the Milwaukee Admirals. Yes, he is playing with a hockey stick made from HIS OWN LEG!
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11.08.06
Posted in News at 7:49 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Belated Election Present
Donald Rumsfeld was fired today. This is a move that I don’t understand, because it seems like a genuine concession to the American people. That’s weird, because old George sure didn’t think he needed to play to the middle at all up until today. Now he’s talking all about ‘cooperation’ and bipartisanship. Don’t be fooled.
This is still the same guy who said only a week ago:
However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses.
It still doesn’t make much sense, though, even if Bush is trying to make amends. El Presidente also said last week that he intended to keep Donald around until the end of his term. Why cave now? A month ago, it could have saved a number of Republican Congressional seats. Today, it seems like a too-little, too-late attempt to appease America’s anger at the President’s truly colossal screwup of, well, just about everything. Whatever happened to Bush’s supposedly legendary political savvy? This is a bush-league (no pun intended) flub.
Still, I’m glad Rummy is gone. It’s hard to imagine a more arrogant, incompetent, contemptible fool to be put in charge of our military (even Robert McNamara eventually admitted that he made mistakes in Vietnam). All that I know about Robert Gates is that he was heavily involved in Iran Contra and is another of Papa Bush’s guys. That doesn’t make me particularly optimistic, since Rummy was one of Papa Bush’s guys, too.
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