On education...

"Promoted" from a thread on grammar_mavens:

Why aren't educators more vigilant about the quality of the education they dish out? Personally, I think it lies with the increasing politicization of education, particularly with the emphasis on equality of results as opposed to an educated citizenry.

My mother taught in the New York City school system for many years. Each year, it seemed, the curriculum would be made easier (I helped her grade papers), and pressure was placed on teachers to make sure students passed. Failing a student was more often than not a casus belli, leading to unpleasant meetings with parents and administrators.

Dumbing down the curriculum is a quick and easy way to achieve an "equal" result. If spelling and grammar no longer matter, then they can't be used to distinguish "better" students from "poorer" ones.

Gutting other requirements, such as language classes, helps streamline the process. Political pressure is particularly effective here. I've heard parents proclaim, at a school board meeting, that learning a foreign language was not essential to a good education. (I know you'll find this hard to believe, but not one board member rose to argue that contention or to advance an argument for language education.)

[Note added postscriptum: I have heard similar arguments regarding music classes, shop, and physical education. In each case, it seemed the parents were really arguing as follows: "My kid isn't any good at this, so it ought not be a required part of the curriculum."]

What to do about the situation? That's tough to say. Any initiative that smells of parents having a real say in education (i.e., having control of how the money is spent) is roundly condemned as right-wing fanaticism. But in the final analysis, nothing will change until individuals do have that power.

Cheers...

Quiet, quiet, quiet...

The first half of the shift was pretty much dead, with only three exchanges with the Russian side. Olga is on console right now, and I'm in the back room in case there is a flurry of activity requiring a second interpreter.

You never know.

In my copious spare time outside of the MCC, I'm reading Hack Attacks Revealed, and between that book and Bruce Schneier's Secrets and Lies : Digital Security in a Networked World, which I was reading in Colorado just prior to coming down to Houston, I find myself thinking that the present situation vis-à-vis computer security is balanced on a very precarious edge, one that will seem wide, deep, and rock-solid just a few years from now.

Then again, perhaps my perspective is a bit skewed. Back when I was in junior high, I stumbled across one of my father's more unusual books, a forensic textbook on homicide investigation. It was a fascinating book, but as I turned the pages, I began to develop a sense of despair, coming to believe that homicide was an ubiquitous phenomenon.

Today, I feel almost the same way about computer and network security (perhaps "insecurity" would be a better word). Such security would seem to be an illusion, and the world that begins at that phone jack in the wall is occupied by significant numbers of people whose mission in cyberspace is to strip-search you, virtually, and possibly retain an item or two of what they find.

No. Actually, I feel worse. Murder is a serious crime, and despite the natural tendency of the media to sensationalize homicide, the enormity of the act itself tends to limit its occurrence.

The exploitation of weak computer security, on the other hand, carries no such baggage. For many, it's a lark, about as serious as spray-painting graffiti on a building, but with much less risk of getting caught.

Over the past few years, I've had computer systems compromised twice. (Which is to say, I am aware of two such instances, so the actual number may be higher.)

The first time, someone rooted my Linux box and proceeded to format my hard drive; the second time, someone quietly created a root-privileged account on my machine, for purposes I can only guess at.

Having strangers scan one's machine - the cyber equivalent of having someone stop by your front door and try the knob to see if the door is locked - is apparently a commonplace occurrence. There are tools out there that automate the process, effectively allowing the user to try a lot of doors in a short period of time. Moreover, when such people do find an door open, the consequences are generally unpleasant and can be serious.

Even more serious is the likelihood (and, in my opinion, inevitability) of a "public outcry" to have the government step in and "solve" the problem. The ringleaders of such an initiative will likely be those who abhor the seeming anarchic environment of the Internet (the news media, multinational entertainment conglomerates [oops, I repeat myself!], and their allies).

The result could be disastrous: A far-fetched scenario might involve serious (and draconian) infrastructure changes that would attempt to combat "unauthorized" behavior over networks; somewhat less fanciful is the establishment of regulations that would make it all but impossible for individuals (but not governments or corporations, natch) to retain anonymity. (Hmmm, this may not be all that far-fetched. I seem to be rehashing much of the content of the "Convention on Cybercrime," which I touched upon in a post last November, on Staying away from the tube....)

In such a world, the Internet would effectively be reduced to the level of television, not just only under the control of a Powerful Few, but bulked up with capabilities that, frankly, make marketers (and bureaucrats) drool.

Television on steroids, as it were.

[Where am I going with this? Beats me. I'm just free-wheeling with some notions, listening to the loops (all is quiet), and fighting a moderate case of oh-dark-thirty fatigue. Does it show?]

I need to go stretch my legs.

Cheers...

A foul, uneasy mood...

I don't know what's gotten into me, but I am not in a good mood. And I can't seem to snap out of it.

The house is pretty crowded with junk. That bothers me. I tried to go through it, separating stuff to keep from stuff to throw away, but after filling two trash bags with the latter, I saw no progress. Looking at the "keep" pile, I started to wonder why it had ended up there and not in a bag. Do I really need an unopened paper tablecloth (original price, $3.49)? Where would I use it? Why? I've not used one before.

I need to get in the correct mood, where I'm deaf to that voice that says "Hey, this might come in useful someday!"

I downloaded and filled in the IRS form to request an additional extension of time to file last year's return. Unfortunately, the instructions don't indicate where I am to send this form, only telling me to send it where I would normally send my return, but I don't know where that is.

Which reminds me... Before I left for Houston, we had a client in the store who left both her state and federal return in overnight envelopes. addressed to the appropriate agencies. The only problem was that the address was not the physical street address that both FedEx and UPS require. When the client did not answer her home phone, I went on the Internet to hit the appropriate web sites, which were of little help in this regard. I called the IRS toll-free help line and was regaled with an automated phone system that was laced liberally with amazingly content-free announcements, mostly centered around the so-called "tax rebate." I called twice, since somewhere along the line some computer decided I had been given enough "information" and cut me off. Unfortunately, the same system cut me off the second time I called, too.

But that was then. Today was now.

I had rented two films upon arriving in Houston, and both of them were due back today. So I sat down around 1 pm to watch an Italian film titled Malèna. It told the story, through a young boy's eyes, of the life of a beautiful young woman whose husband had been killed in North Africa early in World War II in a town that hated her precisely because she was young, beautiful, and alone. Each man seemed to think Malèna was a loose woman who slept with the other men in the town, and the women suspected her of sleeping with their husbands. People would not sell her food. At one point, the town dentist announced that he was sleeping with her, which resulted in her being brought up on charges as a homewrecker.

Eventually, there was only one way she could pay her debts and stay fed, and the townspeople eventually took their revenge for that, too. In the end, though, after the war, she and her husband (who had, it turned out, not actually been killed, but only wounded and taken prisoner) returned to the town, and the last few scenes showed the townspeople coming to accept her.

I didn't understand the point of the film at all.

Anyway, after returning the films, I took the IRS form to the post office around 4 pm, and found the Pearland post office jammed to the rafters, with patrons awaiting their turn to be served by a clerk who was in no great rush to get anything done, least of all service customers. After five minutes, I quit the line and drove down to Clear Lake, stopping at the Webster post office on the way.

The line in Webster was even longer, and the clerk was even slower.

Anyway, I have until the 15th to send the form, so there's no pressing hurry. Maybe 4 pm is not the right time to try to visit post offices around here. I need to determine the correct address to send the form to, anyway.

In the end, even after a dinner at one of my favorite places, the Outback restaurant on Bay Area Boulevard, I was still in a foul mood. I stopped by the Barnes & Noble, but found nothing of interest there.

So, despite the fact that my shift didn't start until 8 pm, I decided to go JSC and loaf a bit. I'm here now, with just less than a half hour to the start of work.

I can feel the mood dissipating, slowly. I'm going to be okay.

Cheers...