Vocab Words For The Week's News

Yeah, I'm going through the teachable moment phase of the year. It should end by Wednesday or Thursday.

assiduous (adjective): showing great care, attention, and effort
dither (verb): be indecisive

Had Chad Haber been assiduous about changing his voter registration from Republican to Libertarian, it's likely Secretary of State Gant and Attorney General Jackley would not be dithering about whether Haber should be allowed to be on the general election ballot.

rack (verb): to cause physical or mental pain
ambivalence (noun): the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

I was racked with ambivalence as I read about looters and the militarized police force in Ferguson, Missouri.

blasé (adjective) unimpressed or indifferent to something because one has experienced or seen it so often before

I am blasé about annual celebratory parades and politicians like Rick Perry being indicted for allegedly using their office to settle a personal grudge. Neither the parade nor the indictment will produce a long term result.

Amazon??Hitler??

First, I haven't followed the Amazon versus book publishers storyline as much as I should have. Everything I have read indicates Amazon is seriously overstepping. Second, my German is pretty rusty, so I can't vouch for the translation in this YouTube clip. That said, it's still worth a look.

I know I'm violating Godwin's Law and assorted Plainsman Corollaries. Don't judge. Watch. I hope someone does a musical soon.

Is It Just Me Or Does The International Audience Get Better Star Trek Trailers?

A domestic trailer:



An international trailer:



Cast your vote in the comments.

Saturday Teacher Weirdness: Let's Make America Unrecognizable

This Mental Floss tweet links to a 2008 post that discusses a Cal State University professor's proposal to change state boundaries and reduce the number of states from 50 to 38.  He also renames each state.  Some called the plan "crazy enough to work," a phrase that can be translated to "politically impossible to enact."

Here's a map that includes the major cities and the new state names.

The 38 States of America

Combining the Dakotas into a single Dakota makes sense.  I'm less positive about living in Platte while my brother gets to live in Superior; he knows he's superior to me; he doesn't need the reaffirmation of a state name..

My Admittedly Small Effort To Bring Liberals And Conservatives Together

Conservative Rod Dreher blogs at The American Conservative.  He has a regular feature called View From Your Table.

Liberal Kevin Drum blogs at Mother Jones.  He has a regular feature called Friday Cat Blogging.

In some cases, conservatives and liberals can combine the best of their ideas.

A Cat Views The Table

This Stuff Made Me Smile

Wear sunscreen and never give up

Scroll down to see an obscure super hero break dance.

The Amazing Fact Generator.

This post about dance music, especially the conclusion:

In younger days, I proudly flew the rockist flag. Yet after several years as a newspaper critic, my defenses wore down. I learned not to get so uptight about music that is often a means rather than an end in itself. It occurred to me that one reason I might not respond favorably to contemporary club/dance/electronica music is because I don’t like to dance and I don’t like clubs filled with people who do. It’s not meant for me — just as Lady Gaga is not meant for me and Justin Bieber is not meant for me.

More than that, I realized that time has a funny way with music. Appalachian mountain music was meant to be danced to. Today we call it “traditional,” with all the connotations of staidness that such a label brings to mind.

We don’t yet call “Last Dance” “traditional music,” but who knows what kind kind of taxonomical tricks the next 100 years will have in store:

Finally, something about Andy Grammer's "Fine By Me"reminds me of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" which reminded me of one of my favorite songs "We Didn't Start The Fire."

Plains Pops: Random Saturday Morning Essay Questions

Answer the following complete sentences or original  color crayon artwork

Question 1: Is the following observation accurate?  Why or why not?  Use concrete examples to support the answer.

Unmasked: When no-experience reformers say "anyone can teach" they mean because "it's something women do" - @DianeRavitch @nancyflanagan
— Paul Thomas (@plthomasEdD) May 19, 2012

Question 2:  Which is more odious: a billionaire "withdrew his U.S. citizenship to save on taxes" or two senators who write legislation that specifically targets him and upends the rule of law by  putting" the burden of proof on individuals rather than the state"?  Read this post if you need more background information.  Once again provide concrete details to support your assertions.


Question 3:  Why can Sweden achieve the following but the United States can't?

But Sweden has made a turnaround since then, and by European standards today it's the picture of economic health: 7.5% unemployment last year, inflation below 2%, and GDP growth of 4.4%. The government's tax take has hovered at 45% of GDP for years, roughly in line with spending, and Swedish benefits remain comprehensive and guaranteed. Once again, Swedes appear to have figured out something the rest of Europe hasn't: Having their welfare state and paying for it too.

Question 4:  When I told one of my students, a junior girl, that Donna Summer had died, the young lady had no idea who Summer was or what songs she sang. Does that fact mean if live in a cultural hinterland?

Saturday English Teacher Weirdness: School Year Prep Edition

Although I've been posting about the debt ceiling and potential default debacle over the past few days, I haven't forgotten that I need to get ready for another school year.  The past few days have given me a few things to think about.

First,  the following statement that author and educator Alfie Kohn made in an Answer Sheet blog interview troubles me.

You can't "motivate" people other than yourself. You can make them do certain things by bribing or threatening them, but you can't make them want to do it. In fact, the more you rely on extrinsic inducements like merit pay or grades, the less interest they're likely to have in doing those things.

I've long believed the statement to be fact.  The problem is act on knowledge that stands in stark contrast to a school, community, and probably national culture that treats grades or other incentives as panaceas.

Next, I think I'll use this Mark White Psychology Today post and its concluding paragraph in my discussion of Polonius's "to thine own self be true" speech in Hamlet.

Before you decide to "be yourself," spend some time thinking about who that is, and decide whether you are living up to your best idea of who you should be—and work on it if you're not. Once you do that, you'll be ready to show that "you" to other people, and you'll do it in the spirit of honesty and authenticity. . . .

For the record, I tell students Polonius reveals that he is an inauthentic windbag when he rattles off his cliches to his son Laertes.

Further, these lines from Seth Godin's re-post about brand mythology should keep me busy in mythology class.

Myths allow us to project ourselves into their stories, to imagine interactions that never took place, to take what's important to us and live it out through the myth.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of entertainment mythological brands. James Bond and Barbie, for example.

But it goes far behond that.

There's clearly a Google mythology and a Starbucks one was well. We feel differently about brands like these than we do about, say Maxwell House or Random House.

Why do Santa and Ronald McDonald have a mythology but not Dave at Wendy's or the Burger King?

Finally, I have to find a way to use this video to answer students who will tell me "Today, I don't feel like doing anything."

I think I'll tell them we can take the day off if they can be more creative Bruno Mars.

Update:  I use Star Wars: A New Hope to conclude mythology.   I would be remiss if I did not offer the following option to some of my artistically inclined students.  A print guide is here.  (HT IO9.com)

Random Things I Learned This Week

Benedict Arnold was born in 1741, and agreeing to play for another basketball team is akin to switching allegiances in the middle of a war, at least to owners of NBA franchises.

We live in a time that is closer to 2050 than the moon landing or Woodstock.  I think that means Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin' is both accurate and old.  I'm just old.

Wonder Woman must still have cultural cachet if Slate, Fox News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all covering it.  A review of issue #600 which features the change can be found here.


College students don't study as much as they used to.  People, with or without consternation, search for answers here and here.

Americans eat 20 percent of the world's frog legs, and soon the U.S. is likely to overtake France and Belgium as the world's largest consumer of frog legs.

Saturday English Teacher Weirdness

While roaming across the inter-webs, I happened upon a post that refers to this novels tournament bracket.  Round 2 is here.  I guess that makes this bracket of young adult fiction the NIT.  Then there's this idea for poetry brackets.  Silly me, I had no idea novels season was almost over, and I thought poetry season started in June.

If lit teachers are going to copy the sports world, we should go all in and play fantasy authors.  (I am aware that the use of the poker term "all in" matched with a fantasy game could be considered an evil mixed metaphor, but I prefer to think of it as a clever bit of misdirection.)

The rules could be fairly simple.  Each team would need six novelists, playwrights, poets, essayists,or short story writers.  Each team must have three male authors and three female authors.  Teams must include authors from the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the 17th Century, the 18th Century, the 19th Century,and the 20th Century.  The team must have American, British, European, and Asian/African authors.

The inclusion of non-American/British authors and the demand for gender equality makes it difficult to stack a team.  For example, I wanted Shakespeare, Twain, and Confucius, but, off the top of my head, I couldn't think of women authors from the other time periods to get all three.

20th Century: Flannery O'Connor (American)

19th Century: Jane Austin (British--She published most of her works between 1810-1815)

18th Century: Mary Wollstonecraft (British)

17th Century: William Shakespeare (British)

Middle Ages: Thomas Aquinas (European)

Ancient World:  Confucius (Asian)

Players earn points every time one of their authors is quoted or alluded to in major news publications or on-line news sources like time Time, Newsweek, CNN, or The New York Times.  Leagues could pick five to ten acceptable publications.  The scoring could be simple:  1 point for an allusion, 2 points for a direct quotation.

For example, my team listed above would get a point for this CNN article that mentions Confucius.  I'd want extra points because poetry about garlic is under-appreciated, but that's a different discussion. Whoever has Twain would get points for this NYT article.  If someone has G.K. Chesterton, they'd get two points for this Time editorial.

Although I started this post as a joke, I might try to flesh this idea out and use it in my world lit class next fall.  I do an allusions unit and try to compare some the authors we cover to American authors the students have studied.  I also have them do a quotation response notebook.  This game might make them a bit more willing to look for quotations in actual reading instead of running to a quote book as a first option.