Spring Break Plans

My friends and I have finally figured out what we are doing for Spring Break. The plan is to drive down to Alisha's house in Naples, Florida. We will leave on March 11 and return on March 17. The group is Dana, Alisha, Amanda, Matt and I. We are taking Amanda's car, which is in good conditon.

When I return on the 17th, I plan to go to Simon's Rock to visit Lucy. Getting back up to Smyrna seemed too complicated just for the weekend, and it seemed like a good time to visit Lucy. This means I won't be home at all for spring break, but don't worry I plan to spend all of Easter break in Smyrna.

In news unrelated to spring break, Matt and I have found an apartment. It is on Lorillard St. and right across Fordham Rd. from campus. The apartments are very nice. Now, I just need to find a job and I will be all set for next year.

Ooh ooh ooh, someone’s really smart

You see something on Best Week Ever, and you tell yourself, no, it's just a joke, no way would Disney do that, and yet...Devo 2.0.

Cultural Lesson #1: A song called "Jerkin' Back 'N' Forth" can be sung by preteens to children.

Cultural Lesson #2: The original lyrics to "Beautiful World" are too much of a downer and must be modified before being sung by preteens to children.

Bad news for James

Colgate is off my list of schools. It just didn't feel right.

Vote now!

Okay, since a major theme of this blog seems to be my nerdiness, I need people to vote as to which part of this morning's incident is most nerdtastic:

1. I knocked a full cup of coffee into my computer keyboard. (Does "spazz" have one Z or two?)


2. I didn't panic, because I knew that, due to the infinite wisdom of IBM, my keyboard has a drainage system for just this sort of incident.


3. After cleaning up my desk, cleaning the keyboard, and setting it out to dry, I went to my closet and pulled out...a backup keyboard.


4. I had to choose from among several backup keyboards.


5. I immediately blogged about the whole thing, because it's pretty much the most exciting thing that happened in South Waltham this weekend.


6. I wrote this post in "Edit Html" mode because I wanted to get the list tags just right.

Lucy's Back at Simon's Rock

Decided at 3:30 this afternoon to head back ahead of storm, and she called that she met no snow, but everyone is making preparations for the snow.

So James, what are your plans for getting from Boston to NYC? Latter has a third less snow predicted now than when I checked this afternoon -- some progress!

I am in love.

This morning, I went for an interview at Hamilton College. The interview was dandy, but afterwards, walking around with Jenn Pope, I really fell in love with the place. There are two sides to campus, Light Side and Dark Side. The Light side used to be the all boys school, and all the buildings are stone and beautiful. The Dark side used to be the all girl school, and all the building were made from cement in the seventies and look very funny and retro. Even so, it's a gorgeous campus. Everyone was very nice. The german class I attended had about twelve students, and was a lot of fun. I was able to participate, because as they learned their grammar lesson it came back to me. I also talked to Jenn's roomate Fiona, who loves musicals, about the musicals they put on. She said they do a lot. Last semester they did The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which she didn't expect me to know, but I did, because I saw it two weeks ago at Manhattanville. She told me a lot about choir, which made me really really excited. I'm just very thrilled, I really hope I get in and can attend Hamilton.

Career advice

Paul Graham has some interesting career advice.

The Ownership Society

Good Slate article with convincing statistics showing the effects of Bush's "ownership society" policies.

Testing . . . Testing . . .

Post your score!
http://intelligence-test.net/part1/

Graphs and staffs

A friend pointed me to this site when I was looking for logarithmic graph paper. I know, I know, you've never needed logarithmic graph paper, but there is so much more! If you've ever needed some form of preprinted paper, chances are you can spec exactly what you want and build it from this page.

An Important Question

Why is there no link to the blog from the clippinger.org site? What a travesty!

Not quite a match...

Today I went with some other RAs and an RD to see Match Point. It was...a little disappointing. The acting was decent, but the story dragged. It was pretty long, and most definitely didn't need to be. I would suggest waiting for this one to go to video.

The teacher says we’re dumb

Now for a subject dear to all Clippingers...school attendance policies!

Five thoughts:

1. If educational funding in the No Child Left Behind era is going to be tied to outcomes, shouldn't attendance-based funding be eliminated? Heck, schools that combine low attendance with good outcomes should be rewarded for their efficiency.
   
   
2. That being said, there should be incentives for good teaching as well as for good outcomes. Call it the Summer School Axiom. Comparative attendance rates within the same school seem like decent measures of teaching quality.
   
   
3. Perhaps it makes me a bad Democrat to say this, but, if attendance is going to be incentivized, the incentives should go to the teachers and administrators, not the students. Base, say, half of each teacher's compensation on his or her comparative attendance rate while outlawing per-teacher attendance management (i.e., class attendance could not be a component of a student's grade). This would provide a strong inducement to retain good teachers...
   
   
4. ...and chase away the bad teachers...
   
   
5. ...which means we would need to pay teachers more. Whew, just in time, the WEA was forming its picket line outside my window.

Explaining Charlie Rose

So, as some of you know because of my incessant bragging, The Charlie Rose Show is based in the same building I'm working in these days, and we see Mr. Rose around the building fairly often. After one such sighting this week and a few comments about it, one of my Canadian co-workers asked who Charlie Rose is. A reasonable question, but rather hard to explain without getting into a lot of ancillary issues (PBS, Rose as example of PBS' quality and highbrow nature, PBS vs. CBC, lack of hockey on PBS unless you live in New Hampshire, cultural importance of UNH hockey in New Hampshire, etc., etc.).

"He's a talk show host. He's been on The Simpsons."

That settled it....