brilliant decision

Not everyone thinks that it's such a good idea to have organized football, at any level, during this particular time. USA Today's Christine Brennan penned a column that speaks for many of us: "Opinion: Big Ten's decision to play football signals darkest day in conference's sports history":

 An excerpt:

 [...]

Just as the Big Ten was looking smarter by the day as COVID-19 outbreaks popped up at Michigan State, Wisconsin and Maryland while other conferences playing football announced COVID-related postponements and soaring cases, the league’s presidents reversed themselves and decided to steer their schools and their football programs right into the teeth of what are predicted to be some of the worst days of the pandemic in October and November.

And how are they doing it? With a mountain of daily antigen tests, special delivery for Big Ten football teams only. Rapid tests for football players, but apparently not for the elderly in Ann Arbor or Columbus or Evanston, or for school children and teachers in Bloomington or New Brunswick or Minneapolis, or for students paying for their education amid the outbreaks in East Lansing or Madison or College Park.

So how will this work? Smooth as silk, I’m sure. Let’s look at Michigan State. The other day, all MSU students were asked to self-quarantine – and 30 large houses, including 23 fraternities and sororities, were ordered into mandatory quarantine – after the school announced 342 new coronavirus cases.

“This is an urgent situation,” Ingham County Health Officer Linda S. Vail said. “The exponential growth of COVID-19 cases must stop.”

So hey, Michigan State, let’s start football! What could go wrong?

[...]

Indeed.

nineteen sixty-four

I listened to this today, on public radio, KUNM in Albuquerque:

"Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation & Apartheid South Africa"

Great speech! London, December 7, 1964. Follow the link above for video from Democracy Now!, with audio of the speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, and also the transcript of the show.

Host Amy Goodman:

In 1964, Dr. King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Days before he received that award in Oslo, Norway, Dr. King traveled to London. On December 7th, 1964, Dr. King gave a speech sponsored by the British group Christian Action about the civil rights struggle in the United States, as well as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The speech was recorded by Saul Bernstein, who was working as the European correspondent for Pacifica Radio. Bernstein’s recording was recently discovered by Brian DeShazor, director of the Pacifica Radio Archives.

little free libraries

A couple of the "Little Free Library" boxes I'm finding around Albuquerque.

westcliff

Great interview with Malcolm Moore, Network Manager at Westcliff High School for Girls Academy, in England: A year of Linux desktop at Westcliff High School

Westcliff began switching its "student-facing computers" to Linux (using KDE) about a year ago. They're using openSUSE. Looks like it's working out well!

science!

A very fun science-related blog: It's Okay To Be Smart

Careful you don't get stuck there for hours.

what's important

Education is important. We all agree with that. And, we all want healthy bodies to go along with healthy minds. But doesn't it seem like we've made college athletics a much bigger deal than what colleges and universities are supposed to be there for?

A few times now, I've mentioned to M.A.L. that I wouldn't mind if intercollegiate sports were significantly de-emphasized -- or even eliminated -- in favor of campus activities offered for students to stay in good physical shape. Intramural athletics are more valuable to the general student body than athletic programs that focus on competing at a high level on the national scene, seems to me.

Food for thought? Consider the following from today's Albuquerque Journal:


Editorial: Sports Spending Leaves Academics in the Dust

By Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board on Wed, Jan 23, 2013

University officials across the country talk a good game — emphasizing the student in student athlete and proclaiming that academics take priority. But a new study shows many fail to put their money where their mouths are.

Instead, they put their money where their athletes are, spending six to 12 times as much per athlete as they spend per student on academics. In the NCAA’s Southeast Conference that translates into $164,000 per athlete when the average student gets just $13,390 in academic resources. It’s a disparity that helps explain why many campuses have new stadiums, refurbished arenas and chemistry buildings that are falling down in disrepair.

The data compiled for the pro-reform Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics highlights what many try to justify as a cost-of-doing-business but in fact represents out-of-control spending on intercollegiate athletics. That spending threatens to bust university budgets, tap-out alumni organizations, raid academic coffers and inflate tuition and fees.

The study found that in addition to the Southeast conference, the schools of the Pac 12, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten and Big East also averaged sixfigure spending per student athlete in 2010. And across Division I, athletic spending rose twice as fast as academic spending between 2005 and 2010.

Yes, sports and school spirit are important to campus life. And yes, everybody loves a winner. But when taxpayers, parents and university officials bemoan high remedial coursework and low four-year graduation rates, they need to acknowledge what they put out front in terms of resources and priorities.

And what they leave in the dust.

going up (and, faster), but why?

The increasing cost of college textbooks. Up 812% since 1978 -- and increasing at an accelerating rate, according to this graph. Incredible.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/why-are-college-textbooks-so-absurdly-expensive/266801/

work

Ever heard of Gladwell's "10,000 hours rule" idea? You give yourself 4 or 5 years of doing something, 40+ hours per week, a job or anything else, and you're gonna get real good at it. There's a "tipping point" in there someplace where you go from being okay at something to really gettin' down with it. The idea struck a chord with me because of being able to look back at a few different jobs I've had. I knew I had the job down after a few months or a year or whatever, but 4 or 5 years of doing it takes things to a whole 'nuther level. Your cocky co-worker who's been there a whole year and half? Still a rookie, and he doesn't even realize it.

I think the same general thing applies to using Linux or shooting a basketball or writing or working on cars or anything else. Maybe it's why that degree takes four years to earn. Reminds me of this old Prince song, "Joy in Repetition," or John Wooden's book The Wizard of Westwood -- as I recall, the title of the first chapter was "Practice, practice, practice." Or, John Handy's jazz classic, "Hard Work." I tell M.A.L. that this is the old dude's secret that he wishes he understood when he was young. 

When I was around 18, I had dropped out of college and I was working on a Building & Grounds crew and the crew leader was this old, toothless dude from Oklahoma, way past retirement age, they called him "Robby." I asked him why he was still out there, driving those trucks and tractors and all that, bustin' his butt. Cat was the hardest worker of all of us. 

"Work is pleasure," he answered. Dang. Took a lot of years for the truth of that to really sink in.

a teacher

"A teacher is someone who is willing to learn things all over again with someone else..."

-- Debian User Forum member "sossego"

looking it up

Does anyone use an actual dictionary anymore? I opened one up about a week ago, only because I didn't have access to the internet at that moment.

If you want to look up a word these days, you can simply open up Google (or you favorite web browser) and type define: followed by the word you want to look up. With Google, you'll get something like this:

Couldn't be easier.

I can't imagine not having a nice dictionary in the home. That would seem like... almost a sin. But, do we really need them anymore? I don't know.

While there's something comforting to me about having a nice dictionary sitting on my bookshelf, these days that's about all it's doing -- sitting there.

There are tons of online dictionaries out there. Some popular ones:

- Mirriam-Webster
- Dictionary.com
- The Free Dictionary
- Cambridge Dictionaries Online
- Oxford Dictionaries

Wictionary looks like an interesting one. From Wikipedia:

Wiktionary (from the words wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages. Unlike standard dictionaries, it is written collaboratively by volunteers, dubbed "Wiktionarians", using wiki software, allowing articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the website.

Like its sister project Wikipedia, Wiktionary is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Because Wiktionary is not limited by print space considerations, most of Wiktionary's language editions provide definitions and translations of words from many languages, and some editions offer additional information typically found in thesauri and lexicons. Additionally, the English Wiktionary includes Wikisaurus, a category that serves as a thesaurus, including lists of slang words, and the Simple English Wiktionary, compiled using the Basic English subset of the English language.

The goal of Wiktionary is to eventually define "all words in all languages."

Some other interesting web sites and pages:

- A list of common abbreviations at aresearchguide.com: http://www.aresearchguide.com/comabb.html
- The Urban Dictionary
- Logos


Cool stuff. Everything's there at our fingertips these days -- all anyone needs is an internet connection. Makes me wonder how all of this is affecting print dictionaries. Found this Telegraph article: Oxford English Dictionary 'will not be printed again':

The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world’s most definitive work on the language, will never be printed because of the impact of the internet on book sales.

Sales of the third edition of the vast tome have fallen due to the increasing popularity of online alternatives, according to its publisher...

OUP [Oxford University Press] said it would continue to print the more familiar Oxford Dictionary of English, the single-volume version sold in bookshops...

Oh, well. Welcome to the Internet Age.

free throws from the heart

Allan Guei, formerly a star basketball player at Compton High School in Los Angeles, won $40,000 dollars in a free throw shooting contest.

Guei, who is heading to Cal-State Northridge on a full scholarship, gave the money to the contest's seven other finalists.

"I've already been blessed so much and I know we're living with a bad economy, so I know this money can really help my classmates," he said in a release from the school. "It was the right decision."

One of the greatest "sports stories" I've ever read. In sports, people talk about players having "heart," but this kid took that to a whole 'nuther level. Beautiful.

Here's a link to the story, from Rivals: http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1237085

the scale of the universe

An incredible presentation at this web page:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

Makes ya feel a bit insignificant, doesn't it?

imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

2 Great American Women

President Obama delivered the eulogy yesterday for Dorothy Height (1912-2010), the great American woman who The New York Times said "was considered both the grande dame of the civil rights era and its unsung heroine."

The NY Times went on to say:

Over the years, historians have made much of the so-called “Big Six” who led the civil rights movement: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney M. Young Jr. Ms. Height, the only woman to work regularly alongside them on projects of national significance, was very much the unheralded seventh, the leader who was cropped out, figuratively and often literally, of images of the era.


Here's a photo from 1963, where Height is seen standing near the podium as Dr. King delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech.

I'm sad to say that until I heard a part of the eulogy delivered by President Obama, today on NPR, I don't think I'd ever heard of Dorothy Height. Hers is definitely a story that needs to be told.

President Obama spoke about a moment a few months ago with Dorothy Height (The NY Times printed the text of the eulogy; here's a link to it):

"And she talked about attending a dinner in the 1940s at the home of Dr. Benjamin Mays, then president of Morehouse College. And seated at the table that evening was a 15-year-old student, "a gifted child," as she described him, filled with a sense of purpose, who was trying to decide whether to enter medicine, or law, or the ministry.

"And many years later, after that gifted child [MLK] had become a gifted preacher..."


While delivering the eulogy, President Obama mentioned Mary McLeod Bethune (the photo at left shows Dorothy Height presenting the Mary McLeod Bethune Human Rights Award to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960). Bethune is another great American woman who we don't hear much about these days. The biographical essay at http://www.africawithin.com/bios/mary_bethune.htm has this to say about her:

"Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), an African American teacher, was one of the great educators of the United States. She was a leader of women, a distinguished adviser to several American presidents, and a powerful champion of racial equality."

The Wikipedia has an extensive article about Bethune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McLeod_Bethune

That and other articles around the internet will tell you a lot about what this incredible woman accomplished during her lifetime.

I first learned about Bethune because of a place that I remember from my childhood, The Bethune Center in Pontiac, Michigan.

Bethune: "The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood."

Photos of Mary McLeod Bethune:

what it SHOULD be all about

Check out Erik Brady's USAToday article about University of Michigan student/athlete DeShawn Sims, 'A good man:' Michigan's Sims battles adversity to graduation.

You don't know how happy I am to use the term "student/athlete" right here.

Sims, a 6'8" forward, played basketball for the Wolverines for four years. He is set to graduate this Saturday.

He's the first in his family to graduate from college, but that's only a part of the story. As Brady says:

DeShawn Sims graduates Saturday from the University of Michigan. His mother, sister, grandmother and aunt will be there to see him get his degree and hear President Obama speak.

His father and brothers will not be there. The men in his family are in prison or dead.

And even that is only part of the story. Check out the article, because I can't do justice to the story in this blog.

What's important to me is that here's a guy who, against all odds, went to college, played basketball, and graduated. A success story. He's got a chance to play in the NBA, but that's not the important thing. That's not what this story is all about.

It's about a boy coming up through hard times and becoming a man.

Becoming a man.

And that's what it should be all about.

work ethic

"Hard work pays off," I like to repeat to my son.

It seems that kids in the U.S. too often don't understand that, though.

Check out Kara Miller's column at boston.com, "My lazy American students."

Loved this line:

If you’re used to playing video games like “Modern Warfare’’ or “Halo’’ all night, how do you fit in four hours of homework? Or rest up for class?