rearranging deck chairs

X pointed out this morning that we need more chairs for both Thanksgiving and general-use dining functions around the Hilltop’s massive table. Her exact words, while sipping coffee at the bar, were something like “finding solid, quality-made chairs for a reasonable price ain’t easy.” I decided then and there that I could include that tidbit within the grumpy fatherly advice given to children as they depart the nest (X added the last two):

1. Don’t get involved with crazy women.
2. Good quality dining table chairs are hard to find.
3. Don’t ever buy a piano.
4. Don’t ever buy a boat.

Of course, this led to me falling into my grumpy old father imitation (?):

“I don’t give a crap about your wife; I don’t have to talk to her. I don’t have to get in your damn boat or move your stupid piano. But, I do have to come over to your house for holidays because your mother will make me. I won’t sit in crappy chairs while eating overcooked turkey so get some goddamned good chairs. And, don’t ask me for any more money.”

On to other stuff.

Joel Klein is following Michelle Rhee as “school chancellors out the door” in urban east coast cities (but for different reasons). I’m bothered by Rhee leaving even if I’m not a DC resident because I think letting her finish the job (five years) would have been the better option but politics intervened. Klein has been in NYC for eight years which is a pretty amazing run. I don’t have fully formed opinions and evidence for charter schools, something Klein fully supported and Rhee seemed to sort of support, but it seems as if both of them were quite willing to take on the unions and bust some heads – nice turn of “union and head-busting” phraseology, isn’t it. I’ve lost count of the number of philippics turned while talking about education out loud and in my crazy head. It’s easy to look at Fairfax county or the district of my youth and make assumptions about the quality of education. I think we’re usually wrong to even consider either of those as the underpinning of the system as a whole. Shouldn’t we always consider the weakest link as the issue at hand? Even if you take that weakest link’s issues and apply them to the stronger links you’ll still see the same problems. Those problems? Mediocre actual skills and results, middling test scores, and grading that is focused on pushing kids to the next level, not learning them to the next level. I’ll let it go for now…I’m pretty pessimistic. I have an analogy to make between education and offshore drilling, if you can believe that, but I’ll hold it for another day.

(Here’s a harsh review of Rhee’s tenure in D.C. Read at will. Here’s a look at Klein’s in NYC.)

I’ve started about book, The Tiger, that has me massively enthralled. I’m taking it bit-by-bit because I’m quite keen on the writing and the story. Here’s a review from the Seattle Times and here’s the piece from NPR that got me interested (you can listen to the audio portion). I’m looking at Lemon in a new light…

Finally, one last yarn. X was given control of taking any important calls at work for a colleague at work who’ll be out of the office for a few days. The real request is for her to simply ‘handle’ the calls and ease the minds of callers – don’t actually try to solve any issues; issues to be solved will be handled by the master upon his return. She’s to just be nice and make them feel as if their concerns and feelings are being stoked. I passed along to her that you can really learn a lot from Roadhouse. In fact, just about every life lesson might be encapsulated in this fine film.

Be nice. You don’t decide to do anything…I’ll let you know.

does that road end?

Sometime over the last few weeks there was some discussion of speed reading; I had flashbacks to infomercials from the 1970s touting Evelyn Woods' course meant to increase my speed and get me closer to the year 2000 and the floating cars; that comes from the mind of a ten year-old. I always thought, when sitting at home in front of the three-channel capable TV, that being able to speed read would make me well impressive. But when it came up at work I tried to think of a need for speed reading in my life. The only area that would be remotely suited to speed reading for me might be the Sunday paper and even that's a reach. Beyond that possibility I got nothing. It seems to me that you read for two reasons: academics and leisure. In either case, I think you're better off reading either for comprehension or enjoyment and not pure acceleration. It certainly isn't going to help me out to rip through any type of textbook or technical publication that requires some thinking and fairly deep comprehension. If I'm reading for leisure then I'm probably reading for enjoyment and there are few that posit pleasure being achieved in the quickest possible time (no jokes, please.) I don't want to be done with East of Eden quicker because I want to soak in the language and enjoy the story; it's the same with the history I read. I make my decisions about books, and whether I'll finish them, in the first 20 or 30 pages - the writing manner is key, not the subject matter. My method of speed reading is not read stuff I don't like or appreciate. One of the questions that came up when were talking was this: Do you have the ability was to put down a leisure reading project if it doesn't grab your attention pretty quickly? For me, yes; I simply stop reading but I don't think everyone is like that; there must be people who feel the need to slog through to the final page and notch up accomplishment. I'm not sure if using a library for your books or if buying them has any effect on that need but maybe I can look into a $1m government grant to conduct a formal study.

There was a link at (from?) Andrew Sullivan today that fell right into my thinking...and into some parallel universe so hold on tight. The premise of the post is, "How much stuff are you really going to get through in the grand scheme of things"? Are you missing something? What are your odds of getting through all the good stuff? It reminds me of Fermat's Last Theorem and the misread logic of us normal folk. This last theorem (last being the last we were able to prove) is an easily comprehended mathematical problem / statement for most us, unlike some other deep and disturbing theorems. What Fermat, a career math hobbyist, put forth was based on the well known Pythagorean theorem, A² + B² = C². He said, as a proven theorem, that this equation cannot be true for any positive whole number (the same whole number) greater than 2 in the exponential position. Unfortunatly, all Fermat left behind was his statement and not his notes. (Is this more than you want to know? Too bad, my blog, my typing.) As an example, he said that A³ + B³ = C³ will never be true. Of course, by "understandable" I meant you could comprehend what he was saying not how to prove the theorem to be correct. (By the way, if you want some good math reading here's the link to the book. Simon Singh's other book The Code Book is also very good.) Don't fret, I'm getting to the full circle part, at least in my mind. As one begins to try to prove this theorem you'd begin to think, as Singh describes, some methodology where if you could eliminate either all the even or all the odd whole integers then you'd be cutting your work by half. Funny that; it's just what I was thinking when I was reading the book. (Or course, I also thought the Caesar Role of encryption was uncrackable...I'm very gullible.) After you turn the page and keep reading Singh hits you with the more than obvious problem with this odd and even number tomfoolery: infinity is sort of infinite and your idea hasn't actually done anything to limit your work. Now, we circle. The speed reading thing ties into this idea in my little head. If all your speed reading, day and night, helped you get through 8/1000ths of 1% of all the books in the World (if I did my percent conversion to words correctly) have you really gotten anywhere? It doesn't seem like much to me and doesn't honestly add much to the art of reading for learning or reading for enjoyment.

I know, someone has some response about the need to read faster if you have to get through loads of coursework; but, my position on that is you do become a faster reader the more you read but it's not necessarily speed reading. I had to at least throw in that disclaimer.

Carry on with your weekend.