Der Ding an Sich

 

The bubble that is I 

Flies through time 

Drifting 

Swirling 

Updraft and down

Fragile bubble

Little thing

All that is

All that will be

All that can be

Itself within itself

The  bubble that is I

A Rising Tide Of Asininity

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/03/05/americas-school-accountability-system-is-broken-here-are-the-issues-that-must-be-addressed-to-fix-it/?sh=575473e57f96

Surprise surprise! I got it right again! (OK, I’m not always right — just almost all the time.🧐). When I took my test and measurements course for my masters degree in school administration, one of the critical points made to us (critical now but at the time just one more data point) was that standardized testing is absolutely useless at evaluating the progress of an individual student, an individual teacher, or an individual school. All it is good for is making a bell shaped curve giving a generalized placement of performance according to a very narrow limited standardized test format and placed in a very broad setting. This is very useful in special education testing but useless for general evaluation of educational quality or performance.

Then President Reagan began screwing things up, as he had to find someone to blame for his policy failures. So he blamed teachers.

A propaganda report was issued worrying about a “rising tide of mediocrity “. A nonsense phrase meeting nothing. The report was pure propaganda, almost entirely data free. Nevertheless, based on that we desperately sought out an accountability system which would be based on the virtually useless data of standardized testing. This was designed to stimulate competition among schools and individual teachers. It’s actual primary effect was destroying teachers’ willingness to cooperate with each other. A teacher who found a clever way to get high scores on the test would never share that with another teacher because she had to compete. Collegiality and the mutual self-help system which has always been the hallmark of education was instantly corroded.

As always with standardized tests, it is mandated that, by the very nature of the test, a bell shaped curve results from the data. Failure to accomplish such a curve results in a test result skewed negatively or positively. The test will then be considered invalid and a new test created which will form the proper and only acceptable result: a bell shaped curve. When students began understanding how to find averages (because teachers were teaching it) the test manufacturers changed the test. They stopped calling them averages and began identifying them as “the mean“.

In other words, the test was no longer testing the students ability to understand the concept or perform it. It was deliberately making it hard for the children to understand so as to force a bell shaped curve because too many students were learning the concept too effectively and that’s not allowed in a bell shaped curve or any kind of standardized testing.  It is absolutely mandated that no matter how well a group performs or how badly it performs, 50% of those taking the test must be at or above the second quartile (the peak of the bell’s shaped curve) and 50% must be below it. 25% must fall at the first quartile or below and 25% must place at the third quartile or above. Please note that this is regardless of the actual level of knowledge or performance.

 This means that if the competition system really worked and all second grade students in a given year were now displaying at or above college level reading skills, the test would be adjusted until it showed that these incredibly brilliant children in fact were divided into 25% failures, 50% successes, and 25% high-performing extreme successes. The same would be true if the entire system failed so badly that not a single second grade student in the entire nation knew their alphabet. The same bell shaped curve would result.

Standardized testing does not test the quality of performance.  Criterion based testing does.

Now here we are 40 years later and guess what? Accountability and competition have proven to be a disaster for our public education system. Who would’ve guessed? Answer: anyone willing to look at the facts. 

Educational “experts” who never actually worked in the classroom but had extensive degrees, endlessly praised the system and supported and encouraged it to spread. I have stated on the record and will now repeat;  they are the equivalent of a medical doctor who says to his patient, “Thee hast an imbalance of thine humors. Tis necessary for to bleed thee that thee might becometh more balanced.“

At this point I can only say that stupid is as stupid does.

> The foundation of every recent accountability system, from the dawn of No Child Left Behind to the dusk of Common Core, has been the Big Standardized Test. And that foundation has cracked and crumbled. It has produced no results in the evaluation of teachers. It has produced no progress in student scores. Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) has recently detailed how the bipartisan coalition that supported testing has disintegrated, in part because parents have lost faith.

…High stakes testing has had a hugely corrosive effect on education, pushing to schools to see their goal not as the full education of the whole child, but as preparing students to score well on the big test. It has shifted school resources away from any topics not on the test. <

Stoners Rule

 https://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/05/terence-mckennas-stoned-ape-theory.html

OK,so what to say about this? First, silly fantasies with zero evidence are not theories. They are silly fantasies.

Second, let’s imagine it happening.

Grunke: Hey, man. You know what, man?

Irk:  No. Like what?

Grunke:  Like, like you know we’re wasting our time man.  Like we could be like really super cool, you know.

Irk:  Oh wow, man! That would be like, great, man.

Grunke: All we got to do is like… You know, make stuff. 

Irk: Oh yeah. We could do that.  Like we got these hands. I mean look at these fingers!  They’re really weird and wild!  Bet we could do amazing stuff with them, specially with these thumbs.

Grunke:  That’s right you got it. Like we could make, you know, like art and...and...and sports and like, media and stuff.

Work:  Yeah, yeah let’s do that.  We can do that. But know what?Let’s, let’s go do some hunting and gathering first, cause, I got, like, you know, the munchies.

Thus civilization was born.

In summation, let me note if that I class this “theory” in the same category as the aquatic ape, ancient aliens, or Atlanteans gifting us civilization.  I wonder if the “theorist” was stoned when he came up with this idea.

That Damned Fire Bell Again

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/12/black-flag-understanding-the-trumpists-latest-threatening-symbol/

 Yes, I have said it before but I think this may be the time I mean it the most. Please read this entire article.

The Republican party has turned into an active terrorist organization.  They have declared war on America. They have declared war on our democracy.  They have declared war on the rest of us.

Way back when George Bush was pushing for his insane war, I was standing with my grandson at the DMV and said I was more afraid of Bush and company than I was of the terrorists because they could only kill me while Bush and company could turn me into a slave. I got an awful lot of dirty looks because at that time the vast majority of the American population were eager to go to war. Yes, that same war that we now so bitterly regret having ever gotten into.

Although Junior didn’t make me into a slave because he actually still had a shred of respect for democracy and left office peacefully, Trump has picked up the torch and used it to set fire to our nation.

I can only go back to my history books and agree with Thomas Jefferson. The issue is a different one, but the results I fear will be the same.

> Discussing the question of Missouri's admission to the Union, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Holmes, "... but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence."

- Jefferson to Holmes, April 22, 18201< Quote from monticello.org.

>Trump’s rallies and gatherings continue to celebrate violence and the prospect of revenge — and specifically of "getting even" with Trump's "enemies."

... In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-black American flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents — meaning nonwhite people, "socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated people and others deemed to be "enemies" of "real America." 

... Black American flags are the flags that mean "no quarter shall be given." They are the opposite of the white flag of surrender.

According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the black American flag originated in the civil war and was flown by the Confederates.

It means that they will not surrender, will not take prisoners, and are willing to die for their cause. It means they will execute their enemies.

Who are their enemies? Pretty much any non-Conservative. You know, Democrats, Liberals, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and the vaccinated. ...

... And a new poll from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics even suggests that more than 50 percent of Trump supporters want "red states" to secede from the Union. 

... Nance also noted that Cawthorn's propaganda video is thematically similar to the type of propaganda used by Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida to radicalize and recruit members.

... I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence — while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury as, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a "lock and key" relationship….

"Shared psychosis" — which is also called "folie à millions" ["madness for millions"] when occurring at the national level or "induced delusions" — refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person's symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence — even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Trump and his regime gave permission and encouragement to his followers and other supporters to engage in antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. 

...As Hussein Ibish warned in a recent article in the Atlantic, "The cancer of political violence is not an endemic American disease. At the moment, it is a Republican disease. No one but Republicans themselves can cure it. Until they do, the violence of the right is only going to keep swelling and crashing. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar."

Label Mania

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/10/01/us/bruces-beach-los-angeles-property-return/index.html

Facebook just told me I didn’t read this article, which I did. I don’t know why it thinks I didn’t. I guess they’re trying to do things right; but they are trying to do  it in a very wrong way.  To put it in other words, computers are stupid and we are forcing them to rule our lives.

Back to the point. 

> "This is what reparations look like," said Bradford, insisting that the county is not giving anything to the Bruce family, yet simply returning their stolen property.<

  This is why I am so offended by the concept of reparations. Everybody means something different by the word. I’m against reparations in the sense of paying reparations as were paid to the victims of internment during World War II.  They deserved reparations because they were the ones who actually suffered. I strongly support the current return of property which had been stolen from these individuals. It was actually taken away from owners improperly and has now been returned to the heirs and assigns thereof.

I don’t call that reparations. I call  call that justice. I call that human rights.

Thankfully, when I read articles which actually specify what individuals mean by the term “reparations”, they almost always end up being basic human rights. So I support most of what people are asking for as “reparations” I’m just not foolish enough to call them reparations.

Most of what has been declared to be white privilege has also been mislabeled. Most of them are not privileges which can be granted or taken away. Most of them are human rights. Those rights have been denied to non-whites but that doesn’t make them a white privilege. It makes them human rights that have been denied.

This is one of the greatest flaws of the left’s positions. Mislabeling concepts makes it easier to criticize them. Label ideas correctly and they are less offensive and more accurate. Both are advantages which should not be thrown away with silly, even stupid misuse of language in order to make some sort of emotional points or gain some sort of emotional advantage in the minds of the language abusers.

What’s more important? Making a stand and flying the flag of your superiority, or winning the battle?

Holy Toenails, Batman

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/covid-mask-vaccination-mandates-aren-t-christian-persecution-ncna1278067

It seems that Christians (some of them even in the form of lawsuits) are protesting the requirement to wear masks “because God created us in His image, we are masking that image.”

As the article points out, this will only make sense, ‘When these conservative Christians start mandating nudity, then they might have a claim about not covering up what God has created.’

Maybe these people would accept masks if they were in the shape of fig leaves?

In one particularly interesting case:

> Last year, a Republican legislator in Ohio refused to wear a mask, arguing in a Facebook post that the U.S. was founded on “Judeo-Christian Principles” that include “we are all created in the image and likeness of God.”<

So now we know that God has a face. We are made in the image of God, we have faces, therefore He has a face. Basic logic.

This leads in inevitable conclusion that He has some other parts that I don’t think Christians are entirely comfortable with discussing. Especially when you think of those particular bits and pieces being part of God.

Also, does that mean men or women are created the image of God? Because (surprise Christians!) they are not exactly alike.  Trying to get a picture of God where He has all the appropriate parts to make both males and females and His image gets a bit disturbing.

(Just in case you’re not getting the picture completely, I’m referring to that which Brits often refer to as the “naughty bits”.  I just have a hard time thinking that Christians would be really upset to find out that God had, let’s say, toenails.  Though I suppose nasal hairs might also be a bit troubling in their own peculiar way.)

Poem Visions

Must be in a poetry sort of mood.

 Visions

Heed me 

Hear me 

You who see the unseen

You who hear the silence

You who know the unknown

You who sense the unreal things

That form the structure of the world

Heed me 

Hear me 

You and I

We are then and also now 

We are here and we are there

We are the unreal and the real

We are one with the godhead and with man

Heed me 

Hear me 

We observe and we take part

We are the bond of yes and no 

We are the soul that others lack

We are at the living and the dead

We know the things that others won’t

Heed me 

Hear me 

We are here so they can be

We are what they will not see

We are the life they need to live

We are the ylem that first was here

We are the myth which forms the word 

Heed me 

Hear me 

We are the sight that is too clear

We are the truth they will not hear 

We are the thought that fosters fear 

We are the dark and we are the light

We are the mirror that they must hate

Heed me 

Hear me 

If you will