CABINETS, PART ONE

Today, two fellas from Golden State Woodworking arrived with goodies and began assembling cabinets for my home studio's control room.   This is what the room looked like "before".    Notice that the floor is not completely level along the facing wall (this is, after all, a converted garage):

The cabinet pieces were custom-built, mostly made of  laminate, but with a finish that is a very good match the existing wood in the space:

There is a cabinet for the studio computer, with a slide-out drawer, behind smoked glass which also blocks most of the fan noise in the room and vents much of the excess heat:

Next up:   adding a (computer) keyboard drawer next to the computer cabinet, mounting the oversize monitor on a swiveling wall stand, reinforcing a (music) keyboard drawer under the main desk, and adding a quadrilateral angled "U-shaped" piece of wood to mount the digital recorder that will butt right up to the lower window frame.   I also have to repaint some scuffed wallboard in spots, and I'm off to Home Depot now to figure out the desired shade.

EXCITING!!!!

DOUBLE STANDARD?

So, in a bit of a news flash (at least for me), I find myself for the first time in my life agreeing with the Catholic League's Bill Donohue. In case you don't know anything about Donohue, he apparently spends much of his free time looking for evidence of anti-Christian (and, more specifically, anti-Catholic) bias, and then issuing press releases which are monuments of quivering outrage to the imagined slight to Holy Mother Church.

Now, I am not Catholic, nor am I anti-Catholic. I am comfortable with the liturgy of Word and Table, and while I don't pray to saints, like a lot of mainline Christians I am 'OK' with a lot of traditions that are not necessarily enshrined in the scriptures. On the other hand, I think the followers of St. Peter have accumulated some theological curiousities over the years, and (being an outfit of human beings) have made their share of mistakes. Donohue and others of his ilk seem unwilling to acknowledge this in any meaningful fashion, unwilling to hold the church apparatus accountable for its shortcomings, for example the widespread abuse of minors in Ireland.

In general, when I see something of Donohue's, I encounter a man who has the vapors over some minor cultural thing, who labors mightily to inveigh against the toothpick of perceived anti-Catholic bias, but seems blind to the log of church-shielded misconduct in his own eye. It's hard to take him seriously.

However, regarding Nicki Minaj's attempt at a simulated, Catholic-style exorcism as part of a Grammy number, Donohue says this: “Whether Minaj is possessed is surely an open question, but what is not in doubt is the irresponsibility of The Recording Academy....Never would they allow an artist to insult Judaism or Islam.”

You know, he's not wrong about that. If Minaj had mocked the Prophet, it would've triggered episodes of violence by Islamic fundamentalists around the world, and been condemned by non-Muslims as intolerant. If Minaj had taken an ax to a Star of David, it would've been widely condemned by an entertainment industry that is blessed with significant numbers of intelligent, influential and observant Jews. I guess the good news is that most Catholics are less willing to take offense than the likes of Bill Donohue.

Me? I operate on the principle that an artist should be given latitude to express themselves, but where were the adults in the room when this clueless teenager, a minor with her whole career in front of her, decided to vulgarize herself as a mini-Madonna? It was wildly inappropriate. The people in charge of this affair should be ashamed of allowing it under the guise of free speech. There is such a thing as prudence. All things may be lawful, but not all things are profitable.

HAND OF FIRE

It's my brother's new book, about the work of Jack Kirby, arguably one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and not just in terms of comics. Check it out!

HAND OF FIRE: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby from Charles Hatfield on Vimeo.

END OF THE BEGINNING

The long-awaited project has begun. With health problems behind me, and fiscal clouds clearing, I am ready to begin the next phase of slouching toward Bethlehem. Now if I can just get my old project at Maximus squared away, I can move on, musically speaking:

CROSSING THE LINE

Let me say in advance that the video clip is ugly.

It shows a politician dodging questions, which is to say it shows a politician. It also shows a radio talk show host become abusive, which is to say it shows a certain kind of radio talk show host.

But that in no way justifies the way this conversation unravels. There's a difference between being a partisan and attacking another person's identity. In this interview, Memphis radio host Thaddeus Matthews comes unglued when talking to GOP candidate Charlotte Bergmann. Bergmann is asked if she is a member of, or affiliated with the Tea Party, and she dodges the question, no doubt for political reasons. That's sad, but the way Matthews handles it is horrible: a... vulgar, hateful, racially-divisive personal attack. See it for yourself:



Now look, I'm a strong supporter of the President. I haven't voted for a Republican in 20 years. But I want to ask all people, regardless of party, to repudiate this kind of speech. It violates the most basic of values, which all Americans (regardless of party affiliation) should cherish. Please note that this is not a "trap". As the title of the link below shows, it was uploaded by someone who apparently thinks Matthews was acting honorably. What a shame.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: NEITHER A CREATIONIST NOR ANTI-GOD

There was a fascinating moment on last night's "Hardball" with pugnacious center-lefty host Chris Matthews, which was covered (not all that accurately) by some right-wing media, and it is emblematic of what is wrong with most media coverage of alleged science vs. religion spats.

Speaking with GOP political operative Ron Christie about the views of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Matthews suggested that many Republicans have a problem with Gingrich's past expressions of support for the concept of global climate change, and he did so in provocative terms: "So the bad Newt, as you guys see it, is the one who believes in science?"

Christie took the bait, and apparently surprised Matthews by affirming that the thought global climate change is simply a hoax, put together by Al Gore and the like. It was a refreshingly straightforward expression of this view, which is often not expressed by mainstream Republicans in such fora....but also pointless, in that this only appeals to a particularly rabid fraction of your own base, and annoys a lot of independent voters.

There is, after all, a way for GOP types to have the middle ground, not casting their opposition to climate change policy as an outright rejection of the science, but merely a cautious and prudent response to a model which is not 100 percent certain. I don't hold with this view, but any dope can see that you instantly lose a lot of independents by indiscrimately trashing all the science and labeling it (incorrectly) a leftist hoax.

Anyway, Christie took the bait, and Matthews then made the connection a lot of mainstream media types continually fail to make: he asked Christie whether he believes in evolution. As NCSE has been saying quite a bit lately, the same knuckle-draggers who want to bring creationism into the public schools tend to be global warming skeptics, and they want to bring their version of "fair and balanced" climate science into the classroom.*

Christie responded that he was "feeling pretty good about evolution these days." That is, he's not opposed to it being taught and, by his flippant tone, doesn't see it as a big issue. Matthews pressed him, though: "Do you believe in it?"

I hate this. Properly speaking, scientific theories are powerful and useful models for studying the natural world. They are grounded in objective data, empirically-determined facts about the natural world. They contain truth, in the sense that they are honest and data-driven, and hold the potential to explain so many pheonomena. But they are not great Truths in a philosophical sense, principles that we must affirm with a statement of faith.

Evolution itself is a fact, and so is the reality of climate change. Evolutionary theory, on the other hand, is never a Truth, but simply the most useful and productive way of explaining how evolution occurs (largely through natural selection), and how evolutionary processes generate the diversity of adapations, and ultimately, much of the features on our world. Properly speaking, scientifically-literate people should accept some version of evolutionary theory as "the best fit" to the data we now have, and the most useful and productive way of studying life that we presently have. They should see that evolutionary theory contains many facts that are undeniable, not the least of which is that life has evolved. But you don't have to believe things like that, because "belief" implies faith in this or that. That populations evolve is trivially easy to demonstrate, and things like that are not beliefs, they are facts.

But, Matthews asked for belief, and so at that point Christie affirmed that he believed in a Creator, and (by way of temporizing) suggested that humans evolved from that Creator. (The transcript on the link above is muddled; listen to the video carefully, and you'll hear Christie use the word 'evolved', not 'fall').

In other words, Christie was dancing pretty close to the idea of theistic evolution, which seems to be the position adopted by both the GOP front-runners. Theistic evolution is not a scientific position, but a theological stance, and it is certainly not taught in the public schools. It is, however, the theological stance held in some form by the majority of voters in this country, and it is a theological stance that is consonant with some understanding of science.

Now, Matthews is certainly aware that a whole lot of the GOP base holds a different theological stance which is not consonant with science: young-Earth creationism, which (based on a literal interpretation of Genesis) see the teaching of evolution as an assault on the authority of the Bible. Consequently, they deny the very clear evidence for the age of the Earth and common descent, because it runs counter to their understanding.

Not exactly a news flash, but Matthews is also willing to do what a lot of media don't do: connect the dots between the "evolution-deniers" and "climate science deniers", who see claims about rising global temperatures as an attempt to undermine our fossil fuel-based economy, U.S. sovereignty, capitalism and their way of life, in general. These individuals tend to have a similarly-literal, black-and-white, unnuanced understanding of economics and politics, and are easily manipulated by anecdotal arguments that supposedly undercut the scientific consensus. Which is to say, that they are easily manipulated by the same sort of bad arguments that have been pushed for years by professional creationists. Thus, it's no surprise, if you scratch a "climate change denier", you'll often find an "evolution denier", as well.

So, that's what Matthews was getting at. I salute him for having the courage to connect the dots. However, his rough-and-tumble interview style often leads to people talking past each other, especially in the case where the person being interviewed is in another location. Impatient partisans + Noticeable lag in response time due to distance traveled = Mischief. In this case, Matthews is too quick to connect-the-dots between Christie's views on climate change and evolution. It's actually not clear from Christie's response whether he has any skepticism regarding the fact of evolution. Watch the video. As soon as Matthews heard the word "Creator", he in effect assumed that Christie was defaulting to something like young-earth creationism, and implied that those who hold such views were "troglodytes."

This allows guys like Christie to quickly invoke the mantra of "faith", and for right-wing bloggers to declare that Christie is some sort of anti-God bigot. But of course, Matthews, an observant Catholic, is not declaring war on religion. He's expressing his distaste for the anti-intellectual, knuckle-dragging set of the American public that would prefer to see their privileged belief systems substituted for real science. It would be fair to say that Matthews does "believe" in evolution, in a sense. He's no creationist, but that doesn't make him anti-God.

Unfortunately, the exchange really doesn't tell us what sort of creationist Christie is, or whether he is even an evolution-denier. A lot of this posturing could be avoided if commentators like Matthews would not frame acceptance of evolutionary theory as a belief system. That gives the real partisans on the other side an easy "out" on grounds of religious liberty. It would actually be better to draw out exactly what their views are, and watch them attempt to dance around details that might offend the troglodytes.

Here's an example of a longer exchange from Matthews with a legislator. Again, Matthews connects the dot, and he makes explicit a larger argument, which is that the GOP lacks credibility in science because of the rampant anti-science attitudes. But, again, he gives rhetorical cover for the pol by framing it in terms of belief:




*Speaking just for myself, I don't think climate science should be either politicized by either end of the aisle, nor do I think that the scientific consensus should be taught as fact. Rather, it should be seen as what it is: a set of possible models, well-supported by data, that indicate that human activity plays a role in shaping the climate, but which stops short of mandating any particular political or economic response.

MORE CRYSTAL BALL GAZING

I predicted that Santorum would gain traction, suggesting that evangelicals such as Gary Bauer and James Dobson would pick the Pennsylvania hard-core pro-lifer as the non-Mormon conservative to rally around. Well, Santorum actually hasn't gained that much traction, stalling a bit in New Hampshire after some testy Q-and-A's with college-age crowds.

Nevertheless, he has been anointed. Santorum actually would be in worse shape, if it wasn't for the strength of his opposition. Perry and Huntsman are both non-factors that may be outdrawn by the Stephen Colbert Political Stunt Machine, and while Gingrich has hurt Romney with his questions about Bain, he has also bled some support in the backlash, wherein GOP faithful fall for the false equation: "Gingrich questions Bain Capital business practices = Gingrich places capitalism on trial."

Which reminds me of something, visible after the ad.....

SIGNS OF THE AFLOCKALYPSE

As I often say to my students when breaking down some counter-intuitive but astounding fact about the natural world, "I can't make this stuff up." Dawkins is on to something here: there really is something seemingly magical about reality, in that it often defeats our expectations, which are so grounded in our day-to-day experience. When we encounter phenomena at scale different from ours, they really do seem to violate our sense of what the rules are. This is part of the appeal of magic, in that sleight-of-hand tricks and optical illusions are used to elicit a sense of "rule violation". We are amazed and intrigued, and we wonder "how do they do that?"

This is a healthy sense of "magic", the sense in which apparent rule violation elicits wonder and inspires the thoughtful to attempt to figure out the secrets behind Nature's tricks. In science, we proceed most fruitfully when we assume that there is, in fact, a natural explanation for natural phenomena and develop proposals ("the hypothesis") to explain the phenomena. What makes the hypothesis scientific, by the way, is whether or not it can be tested via experiment.

Of course, there is another meaning to the word "magical". That is when a person assumes that the phenomena in question can not be explained naturally, and requires that the trick not be explained in terms of Nature's rules, but in terms of those rules being violated. Otherwise intelligent and educated people do this all the time when they encounter phenomena or other ideas that run counter to their day-to-day experience, and often feel that they are exercising "common sense" when they embrace a supernatural cause. "Embrace" is the right word, because once you are emotionally invested in the supernatural claim, it becomes difficult to look at the evidence dispassionately. I claim that once a person is so invested, they have adopted an unhealthy sort of "magical thinking", which places them on a collision course with reality and makes them more willing to affirm things that are ludicrous on their face.

Here's an amazing example of this. There is a recent phenomenon (mostly in the Midwestern United States) of flocks of birds falling dead, out of the sky, by the hundreds in some cases:



Well, this is obviously a natural phenomena that seems to violate our expectations, and it certainly cries out for explanation. Scientists are conditioned by their disciplines to seek natural explanations for natural phenomena, and it is a truism that such an approach is the only one that proves rewarding in scientific terms. So, naturally, scientists have proposed different ideas to explain the phenomena of birds falling dead out of the sky. They will gain support to the degree that they can be tested. That's the scientific response to anything that looks like magic: assume a natural cause, come up with creative ideas that can be tested, and see how the ideas perform.

Or, you can do the unscientific version, and assume that anything that looks like magic really is magic, the act of a supernatural being. So if birds drop dead....it must be God killing them. Why would God do that? Well....check out this video and get the skinny from Cindy Jacobs, a Weatherford, Texas woman who helps lead a ministry called Generals International, and who is actually regarded as a "prophet" by the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. Members of this group (whose political influence is growing) believe that they are engaging in spiritual warfare, and that natural disasters are signs of God's judgement, so they are preconditioned in a sense to regard the following idea as plausible: according to Jacobs, flocks of birds falling dead out of the sky is caused by a change in government policy regarding gays in the military. That's right, God kills birds because we no longer expect service people to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

This is an example of the sort of "magical" thinking that science can't do anything with, because it's something we can conceive---but can't test.

It's conceivable that a supernatural being could've killed birdies because our government has dropped a policy that requires gay service people to keep their orientation under their hat, because, don'tcha know, the supernatural being hates teh gay. It's also conceivable that a supernatural being loves gays and hates gay-baiting ninnies, and so the supernatural being killed the birdies because our government doesn't do enough to promote teh gay.

Both of these ideas are conceivable, but neither are testable in a scientific sense. Both are pretty ridiculous. Why would God kill thousands of blackbirds in Arkansas to protest gayness? I mean, if a thousand pink cockatiels fell out of the sky over Castro Street, it might seem a little more on-point...but from a scientific perspective, all such explanations are still equally untestable, and worthy of scorn.

What about a non-scientific perspective? Well, all of us have them. We also have a tendency to mix all of our non-scientific perspectives together. We jumble together our personal interests, our cultural concerns, our ethnographic history....and our personal beliefs about the supernatural. We invest in them, and to the extent that we are unable to think objectively about them, we become capable of not just believing things which can't be tested, but acting as if others should kow-tow to things that, while not actually demonstrated, seem unquestionably true to ourselves.

Me, I believe His Eye is on the Sparrow, but I don't go around expecting other Christians to believe that Yahweh would capriciously punish our country by making birds drop dead---and, by extension, I am reluctant to regard gay people as my natural enemies. It's not a plague, nor is it something that most people who identify as "gay" would choose, given that people like Cindy Jacobs treat them as lepers.

CRYSTAL BALL SEASON

Well, I'm back with another set of comments on politics. This is what happens when a fella like me has too much time on his hands due to convalescence, I'm afraid. Just to be clear, I'm feeling better, but when I'm really better, probably won't have time to blog. It's kind of like the guy who said he was "calling in well", and that you would know he was sick because he'd be back in the office, nursing what made him unwell in the first place.

In an earlier post, I had made a couple of predictions about the ever-entertaining GOP primary season under way....

1) A new pro-Santorum super PAC begins media buys highly critical of Romney in South Carolina.

I'm looking pretty good here. The Senator's main source of funding prior to last month was his own "leadership PAC", called America's Foundation. As of June, they had spent slightly more than half a million on Santorum's campaign, but during the buildup to the caucus Santorum's, um, sympathizers have quietly moved the major donors to a new super PAC called Red White and Blue Fund, which has ponied up for ads in South Carolina, while at the same time using an increasingly-popular accounting trick to delay revealing their donors list.

2) The conservative elites will go back to attempting to ignore Congressman Paul, because he doesn't need their money and isn't going anywhere.

This is very interesting, because all the candidates but Romney have suggested that Paul and his supporters need to be treated with respect. But the fallout from increased media scrutiny over Paul's fringe-feeding newsletters seems to have deprived him of his hoped-for bubble:


The blue bubble is Gov. Perry, who was undone by gaffes in public appearance that reflect a lack of preparation. The red bubble is the meteor named Herman Cain, who simply wasn't prepared to handle media scrutiny of his personal life. The green bubble is the reinvention of Newt Gingrich, who for nearly a month portrayed himself as a happy warrior and changed man, and the likely nominee. Super PAC money, mostly from Mitt Romney's, um, sympathizers, must have missed the memo, crushing Gingrich with a slew of negative (and to some degree misleading) ads.

Paul, with a solid Iowa operation, did go up a tad, but he never peaked the way the previous three "ABM's" launched, plateauing before the caucus, which allowed Sen. Santorum a means to seize what was essentially the best part of a three-way tie. There is no yellow bubble, and there's not going to be one. From this moment on, the story is going to be of three lines moving roughly in parallel: Romney, Santorum and Gingrich.

Interestingly enough, the independent or moderate-minded Republican who might've been intrigued by Paul seems to be shifting their attention to Huntsman, who has a make-or-break, all-or-nothing strategy in the Granite State. Whether it is the lack of coverage by conservative media, an endorsement by the Boston Globe, or just a juvenile episode is hard to say, but at this critical juncture the Paul and Huntsman campaigns have turned a lot of their attention towards sniping at one another, rather than attempting to make inroads against the front-runner (Gov. Romney).

3) All the major media will do their "Who is Rick Santorum, really?" story and for the most part, he will gain traction because he has a pitch that distinguishes himself from the rest of the GOP field, one that resonates with blue-collar voters without the populist rhetoric that alienates establishment Republicans.

The first half of that "prediction" is comically easy to demonstrate, I won't bore you with it. The second part is up in the air: so far Santorum hasn't gotten more press (mostly bad) for combative exchanges with college-age voters, most of whom are in school or who don't seem to be blue-collar in orientation. As with everything else in the next 48 hours, debate heroics (or the lack thereof) will probably determine who gets traction, and who fades.

As for my big prediction, that evangelicals are looking for a conservative they can back against Romney, at least one of the heavy hitters I alluded to earlier (Gary Bauer), just came out with an endorsement of Santorum, less than 24 hours after being quoted as being opposed to any conclave to diss Romney. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck.....

DOTS AND DASHES

So, I had my surgery on the 28th and am still recovering. Every day is different. I came home the day after the surgery and so far have made strides far more rapidly than I would've imagined. Many sites on the web discussing ACDF make far more conservative projections for recovery than what I've experienced, but my surgeon's more assertive estimate seems to be on target. I have to say that so far I am really impressed. My scar is smaller. My voice largely feels unaffected, even when wearing the dressing (which I took off yesterday). I've worn a collar as a precaution, especially when a passenger in a car.

Yesterday, I even drove to my favorite bakery---with the collar on. It had been recommended that I wait 5-7 days before doing that, but the recommendation was predicated on regular use of the prescribed narcotic, which I jettisoned after using only two pills in the first six days, largely due to the lack of acute pain. I sat at the bakery for two hours and made notes on a pet project of mine that I've had on the back burner, and consumed a chocolate croissant....and three cups of coffee. That last proved to be the road to a modest setback.

I returned home, somewhat tired, and caught the imminent caucus coverage from Iowa. After it had begun, I indulged myself in a little Skyrim action. Around eight in the evening my time, I began to feel a tad queasy with the coffee sitting in my empty belly and had a little more food. After about an hour of TV viewing with the wife, I tried to relax enough to sleep but the queasiness returned. My sleeping was fitful, and I awoke at 5:30 this morning unprompted, with my head full of thoughts (see, I'm blogging for a reason).....and many of my muscle groups twitching in a mild and irregular way while laying in bed.

I mean, seriously. Little twitches in my calves, shoulders, eyelids, forearms, feet. Not painful, not predictable....just, you know, there. I literally lay in bed for about an hour with various thoughts percolating and, like an old telegraph line, twitchy twitchy twitch twitch twitch, the neurological dots and dashes of my apparently sephamoric (and sophomoric) recuperation.

So, today began not so much with discomfort as annoyance and mild puzzlement. I am going to make a repeat of the coffee shop at some point with a little more solid food in play. If I've become newly sensitive to caffeine, then I might as well determine that now as I go forward. With the best of intentions, I hope to work on the garage today and perhaps do a little walking. Certainly, my post-operative water weight drop (gasp! five kilos) encourages me to slog forward. So, we'll see how things go today. Based on the last five days, I expect the unexpected.

Speaking of which....the caucuses. Let me go on record with my predictions for the next two weeks for the GOP field, which has been the most unexpectedly entertaining political spectacle of my lifetime. A Massachusetts moderate with deep pockets and national campaign experience, a career conspiracy theorist out-of-step with his own party's establishment wing, a distrusted former Speaker of the House, and various "social conservatives" of one stripe or another, in an evolving political marketplace increasingly more defined by national media than pressing the flesh. The phrase "retail politics" has become quite the catchword, with former Sen. Santorum proving that door-to-door (or at least county-to-county) pitchmanship can at least temporarily surmount vast disadvantages in cash flow, organization and media coverage. Personally, I think the notion that such politics is "retail" is a pretty revealing turn of phrase where politicians and media outlets are concerned, particularly conservative ones.

Still, Santorum's late push makes him the latest non-LDS flavor of the week, and thus he will finally get a window to build a campaign that could have national significance...if the money and organization will just manifest itself. And, frankly, with enough money, you can build quite a bit of organization. It really comes down to this: going to all 99 counties allowed Santorum to position himself as a viable alternative to Iowans in the closing days before last night's caucus, but to go the next mile, he's going to need money. He's got a week to make a solid impression on New Hampshire voters and needs to finish in the top three. He'll have slightly more than a week before what will be his biggest debate opportunity in South Carolina, followed in just a few days by the primary that he will need to finish at least second.

To do those things, he will need cash from the outside. What worked in Iowa (essentially stalking the entire state for more than a month) won't work in the rest of primary season, where the pace accelerates.

But.....here's where things get interesting. Michelle Bachmann just threw in the towel, while repeatedly dropping her equivalent of the F-bomb ("socialism!"). Seems the people of Iowa have spoken with a very clear voice, Rep. Bachmann said, and, you know, the voice of the people is the voice of God. Her evangelical rhetoric, which had been dialed back dramatically in the last two weeks, was back in full force Almighty God was invoked constantly, but more subdued in a presser attended largely by the media and Bachmann's immediate family.

Meanwhile, the conservative 'oopsy', Texas Gov. Rick Perry (your 5th-place finisher) has suspended his campaign this morning, and is returning to the Lone Star State to, and I quote, "to determine whether there is a path forward" to winning the White House. Perry has spent a lot of evangelical cash in the past month, and still has a war chest estimated at $3.5 million, but I can read between the lines......because of the next news item:

A group of movement conservatives has called an emergency meeting in Texas next weekend to find a “consensus” Republican presidential hopeful, POLITICO has learned.

“You and your spouse are cordially invited to a private meeting with national conservative leaders of faith at the ranch of Paul and Nancy Pressler near Brenham, Texas, with the purpose of attempting to unite and to come to a consensus on which Republican Presidential candidate or candidates to support, or which not to support,” read an invitation that is making its way into in-boxes Wednesday morning.

The meeting is being hosted by such prominent conservative figures as James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Don Wildmon, one-time chairman of the American Family Association; and Gary Bauer, himself a former presidential candidate.

Many of the individuals on the host list attended a previous closed-door session with Rick Perry this summer, but Perry’s candidacy stalled out, and he returned home to Texas after a disappointing fifth-place finish in Iowa.

Movement conservatives are concerned that a vote split between Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum among base voters could enable Mitt Romney to grab the GOP nomination. A source who shared the invitation said the meeting was about how to avoid such a possibility.

Yet time is short, with New Hampshire Tuesday and both South Carolina and Florida contests in January. In many ways, the Texas meeting is an 11th-hour version of the conversation that many conservative activists have been having for more than a year, how to find a down-the-line conservative to stop Romney — and until now, they’ve come up short.

Romney edged out Santorum by eight votes in the Iowa caucuses, and Gingrich placed a distant fourth, behind Ron Paul.

Santorum seems best positioned to take on the mantle of Romney-stopper, particularly given his own appeal to evangelical voters in Iowa, but his sudden surge in Iowa left him heading into future contests short of cash and on-the-ground organizations in upcoming states.

Gingrich praised Santorum in his concession speech Tuesday in Iowa, but showed no sign of dropping out of the race — pledging to assail Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate” while campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Michele Bachmann, who never caught fire with conservative elites, suspended her campaign Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, a prominent Iowa conservative, Bob Vander Platts, called on Republicans to unite behind Santorum in hopes of stopping Romney. Vander Platts, who has backed Santorum, suggested Gingrich should reassess his candidacy.

If Republicans are going to put up a “pro-family conservative against Mitt Romney, some decisions need to be made,” the former gubernatorial candidate told reporters at a Santorum rally.

Let me spell it out for the people who can't read the tea leaves. Bachmann's political career has been an arc of a true believer, with much of her funding coming from the groups above. Perry is less beholden to Dobson and the like, but got into the race late after a fairly secretive group of evangelicals in Texas offered to pony up much of the seed money for a late entry. Both of them have crashed and burned, and now the various players on the Christian Right are essentially converging on Texas to talk strategy? Let's tell it the way this really is: both Bachmann and Perry got the word late last night from the money men on this side of the equation, and the word was "thanks, but no thanks." Be a good soldier, Michelle. Time to go home, Rick. And time to decide between Newt or the newly-emergent Santorum (both Catholics) to carry the voice of the social conservatives. My guess is that Santorum is going to win, because he has more real cred with the social conservatives

My predictions? A new pro-Santorum super PAC begins media buys highly critical of Romney in South Carolina. The conservative elites will go back to attempting to ignore Congressman Paul, because he doesn't need their money and isn't going anywhere. All the major media will do their "Who is Rick Santorum, really?" story and for the most part, he will gain traction because he has a pitch that distinguishes himself from the rest of the GOP field, one that resonates with blue-collar voters without the populist rhetoric that alienates establishment Republicans. Romney will win New Hampshire, but he will have to fight a three-front war against the other remaining contenders, who will largely lay off each other and concentrate on the front runner. Santorum doesn't need to win, he just needs to place in the top three. All four will head to South Carolina, even though there will be a concerted effort to get Speaker Gingrich out of the race a week from now when he finishes behind John Huntsman, who will score his only significant showing by finishing in the top four.

I think the best part of this is that the evangelicals are forced to choose between four candidates, none of whom are what both Perry and Bachmann actually were, which is to say, evangelicals. That they still believe that they can be kingmakers at this late hour says as much about the wild, fluid field as it does about their hubris.

HEALTH UPDATE: IN WHICH I MOVE TO SKYRIM

So, I am definitely having the ACDF procedure on the 28th. I am supposedly an excellent candidate, and I've been able to weather the semester, battling sporadic pain which varies in intensity and duration. I've made it to Finals Week, wherein the demands on my body are much reduced, so (magical thinking, knock on wood) I'm going to be able to finish up. I am disappointed in my performance as a teacher, but considering everything it hasn't been as bad as I feared in terms of student performance, and it is my hope that, with a successful surgical outcome, I will be able to revisit first-semester standards as needed and do more engaging activities in the spring.

Now the down side. Surviving isn't thriving. The pain essentially encourages lassitude and, I hate to admit it, procrastination. "I'll do something later when I feel better." The problem with this attitude is that you have to something on a regular basis, engaging the mind and body, if you want to maintain your present level of mobility and intellectual acuity. So my weight loss that I crowed about back in October hasn't entirely evaporated--I'm still on the good side of 215---but I have gained 6-7 pounds back. And I'm not as sharp mentally as I would like, and many commitments have gone "by the boards."

I wanted to work on a Civil War show, for example....postponed. I have a potential biology book project.....postponed. My CD project, tantalizing close to the final mix stage.....postponed. My plan to rework the arrangements for my church's Christmas Day cantata, adding some instruments, etc......abandoned. Christmas shopping?? Ha!

So, clearly, I'm hoping that the surgery improves my quality of life and I'm counting down the days to the 28th. It's going to hurt, but the potential benefit pencils out so much above the risks that I'd be a fool not to do it. In retrospect, I wish I had done it as soon as it was diagnosed, rather than work around until the holidays. If I had known just how my students would've done, how the church's music program would've evolved, etc. with me at just 80 percent, I would've done it sooner. It testifies to the fact that maybe I'm not good at delegating tasks, and tend to overload myself. If I had more skills in this area, maybe I would've gotten back in form before Thanksgiving and finished strong.

On the other hand, not having the surgery gave me the opportunity to play with the Trike Shop in a pair of October gigs, so maybe it's all for the best. Sometimes, there is no one best answer, but only intelligent choices. Sometimes, not even that. If you can't move without hurting, and you find it hard to sit at a desk or a keyboard, it makes it hard to work on software or music. My dreams have been (for me) unusually memorable, a sign that I'm not using my creative juices when conscious enough. I've been playing with lyrics of late, since this is something I can do at a laptop, standing....I need an outlet.

Still, when you don't want to move, a TV show or a video game is hard to resist. I've never been one to stay glued to the tube or any game for too long, because I get antsy. But I've watched a lot of Cowboys football the last month, much more than usual, and I've drained dozens of hours playing....this.

For the record, my character's name is CattyHatty.

WILLARD'S WEALTHY, BUT DOES THIS MAKE HIM A RAT?

When not keeping track of all the new ways that the Dallas Cowboys have discovered to lose games, I also follow politics a tad.

I remain amazed so that so few people in the media will acknowledge the stark truth: namely, that the "Anyone But Mitt" movement in the GOP has legs, and that at least one of those legs should be labeled 'bigotry', as a significant number of evangelical Christians can't abide the thought of a Latter-Day-Saint as standard bearer. But hardly a peep on this publicly from the pundits or the political classes. Instead, you get endlessly-recycled questions about whether Mitt, you know, has the right conservative views or a set of core convictions. Much of this stuff rings hollow with me, because you could say similar things about many of Mitt's rivals. And yet, for some reason, this stuff sticks to him more, and I don't think it's because he's the putative favorite going into primary season. It's because voters are looking for a reason to reject him.

For example, you hear endlessly-parsed discussions about how Mitt is a "flip-flopper" (like Gingrich isn't?), or that he is out-of-touch with the mainstream of his own party (um, um, Ron Paul?), or that he is terribly-beholden to K Street (Shoot, that's almost everybody other than Paul, isn't it?) I watch Rick Perry make mountains out of molehill from Romney's book, where an overly generous reading of a self-congratulatory line out his state's health care (which includes the now-vilified individual mandate) is inflated as proscribing the exact same sort of solution at a federal level....which, really, if you wanted to look at it carefully, it doesn't. And, really, how does the Tea Party think they are going to maintain their impact on the legislature unless they rally behind a candidate that polls show actually has the potential to beat Mr. Obama in 2012? I mean, hello: Bachmann, Perry, Paul, Santorum....those guys don't have what it takes to win in the general election, and everyone knows it.

Still, his offer of $10,000 in an off-hand exchange with Perry last Saturday has both his primary rivals and the Democrats gleeful, and another excuse not to talk about the elephant in the room with the elephantine party, Romney's faith. What a shame.

For the record, if I had made an off-hand offer of a wager to Mr. Perry, I would've offered about $30, which I estimate is that fraction of my net worth equivalent to the value of 10 g's to a man of Mr. Romney's significant wealth (in excess of $200 million, by most accounts). Of course, that wouldn't get me even the door at Tiffany's with Mr. and Mrs. Gingrich, and would amount to a valet parking tip for Mr. Santorum, but let's be real: if rank-and-file Republicans really cared about appearing cluelessly invested in the 1 percent as much as some of them demonize Mormonism as a cult, then Romney wouldn't have a snowball's chance. Populist demagoguing against the rich isn't going to hurt Romney as much as with the GOP base as in the general election, and to the extent that other GOP candidates use it, it reflects their cynical willingness to bash Romney on something that doesn't really bother most Republicans that much, in order to avoid having to directly appeal to anti-LDS bigotry.

MONA LISA, MONA LISA, THEY HAVE FRAMED YOU

So....this just in, a New York artist has claimed that, by turning Da Vinci's iconic Mona Lisa sideways, you can detect images of various animals, among them a lion and a buffalo. These hidden beasts supposedly support the view that the strangely-compelling and legendary portrait is actually a commentary on jealousy....



Frankly, I envy this fellow's imagination. As you can see from the above image, more than a little interpretation is required. What I find interesting is not whether or not there might be embedded images of animals (which is plausible), but that the artist, one Ron Piccirillo, sees a buffalo, or bison.

It is true that bison, or Wisent, were common in Europe....about 1,200 years ago. But the beasts were largely driven to extinction in Southern Europe before the Middle Ages, and were almost exclusively confined by the 15th century to a forested reserve that is about one-third the size of Fresno County, an area which today straddles the border between Poland and Belarus.

How would Da Vinci have seen the European bison? He lived his entire life in Italy and France, regions where the bison populations had been driven extinct more than five centuries earlier. At best, he might've seen a (very old) hide or skulls, taxidermy having not been developed, or else drawings made by travelers. This all seems very improbable, and a telling comment on Mr. Piccirillo's ability to see faces where, perhaps, nothing such was intended. Which is common.

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING (HEALTH)

So, towards the end of the first session of summer school, I experienced two events. One has tended to make me motivated, while the other has often made me depressed, and each has to do with my health. Good days, bad days and tough breaks now follow....

On the motivated side, my beautiful wife gets cuter every day as she passed the six-month anniversary of gastric bypass surgery. Prior to the surgery, she was diabetic, was on medication for that and high blood pressure, and weighed more than her already-obese husband, despite being nearly seven inches shorter. Here's a shot from May of 2010, before I went to the Galapagos, and six months from my wife's procedure:



Here's a shot from about a month ago. Post-surgery, she has lost over 70 pounds. She is no longer classified as diabetic and has received clearance to reduce much of her meds. She looks great and spends much of her energy shopping.

As I have joked more than once, my medical benefits paid for the surgery but somehow failed to cover the post-operative clothing allowance. And, with each pound lost, and with each round of old garments given to Salvation Army, it became clearer to both of us that there had been a role reversal of a sorts. Simply put, it was time for me to do something about my weight if I wanted to 'keep up with the Jones's', or in this case, her eat-right, feel-good Jones. I was now the ugly duckling and, frankly, no longer a comely accessory.

Well, that initially infuriated me. I am determined not to be the 'weak link' and I am certainly not going to take any crap in that department lying down. So, I told the wife in no uncertain terms that I had something that she doesn't have: will power. I announced that I was now focused, and that I was going to make her eat her words, and that I was going to achieve this weight loss without surgery.

This has not turned out to be anywhere as easy as I thought. When I went to the Galapagos last summer (2010), I left Fresno between 235-240 pounds (I am, charitably, 5'11" in height). The demands of that 10-day excursion (six plain rides, six crossings of the equator, over 500 miles on boat, daily hikes and scuba dives) helped me shave off some poundage quickly and I returned to the states having lost about 10 pounds. Inspired by this, I lost an additional 14-15 pounds pretty quickly and by the end of August (right before school started) I had my weight down to 209 pounds.

And then the Fall 2010 semester began, and I lost my focus. I never put all of the weight back on, and I checked the scale regularly, but I would oscillate from 216-223 over the next eight months. Better than before, but not that changed. My wardrobe was often ill-fitting and tired, and a expensive dress suit that had looked sharp on me in August of 2010 was best left unbuttoned by May of this year. Having said all that, given that I had lost 25 pounds in just three weeks the previous summer, I figured that this year's July resolution would be easily doable.


Uh, no. As you can see from the running chart above, I've gone up-and-down. It's literally taken twice as long to lose half-as much weight. Part of that is aging, part of that is lack of exercise and part of it is....well, the image at the very top of this post.

A few weeks before I began my new regime, I was in an accident, rear-ended by a young woman while I was in the left-hand turn lane at Fresno and Herndon. The back end of my Toyota Tacoma was bent in at a 45-degree angle and the right rear wheel well (try saying that fast, ten times) was deformed. Both the mechanics who worked on my vehicle (over $4,800 in repair costs) and my physics colleagues estimated the collision was in excess of 30 miles per hour. Fortunately, the driver who hit me was driving her mother's vehicle, and her mother had insurance, which paid for the damage to the vehicle.

I felt fine immediately after the accident, which was in the late afternoon on June 29th. Two hours later, however, I began to have ominous symptoms while attempting to compete with my team at the Fresno Pub Quiz. Tingling and numbing in the left hand, soreness in the neck, shooting pains up-and-down the right shoulder and right biceps. In a word, whiplash, and a trip to the doctor the next day.

By the time I was examined, I had determined that the symptoms were more severe depending on whether I was standing or sitting. They tested my reflexes and muscle tone, and came up with a tentative diagnosis of 'cervical radiopathy', which simply means that something in the position of my neck was triggering pain in the left arm and shoulder. They prescribed drugs: a narcotic (Vicodin) for daytime pain and a muscle relaxer (Soma) to help me sleep. They sent me to physical therapy, which did wonders for my neck (the whiplash) but failed to make any headway with the hand tingling or left arm/shoulder pain. After a second visit 45 days later, my primary physician added another drug, requested both X-rays and MRI and referred me and all of this data to a neurosurgeon.

On Wednesday afternoon, August 31st, more than 60 days after the accident, I saw the neurosurgeon....and got bad news. The accident, it seems, had made a previously asymptomatic area of my spine painful. One of my 49-year-old vertebral discs had moved, and as a result the sixth cervical vertebrae (C6) was now impinging a nerve. The recommendation: surgery, specifically a procedure called 'Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion, or ACDF'. You can read more about that here. Or, heck, if it doesn't bother you, you can watch this (relatively low-res) video.





Basically, they cut open your neck, spread the incison to expose a rectangular area above the vertebrae in question, push the other tubes (esophagus and trachea) out of the way and pull out the disc with fancy-schmancy pliers. That part is basically crude: cut, shove and yank. A graft of some material is inserted where the disc used to be, and to hold it all in place, a titanium appliance that looks like the plate on a door lock is screwed into the C5 and C6 vertebrae, two screws apiece, by hand. That part looks reasonably slick. It's relatively-common surgery and patients usually go home the next day, with full recovery taking 2-4 weeks.

I could schedule it after Christmas with minimum disruption of my (two) jobs and the rest of my life, and I have accepted that, ceteris paribus, it will have to be done at some point...if not now, then within the next few years. I have recurrent pain, especially when I sit for any length of time----as, for instance, right now as I'm (owch) typing this blog entry. I would prefer not to have the pain, but I have a pretty high tolerance compared to most people. I would rather not have it if I can avoid it, or just delay it, because a small percentage of those who have this surgery need more than 4 weeks to recover their voice due to brusing of the trachea. There is possibility that the nerve which innervates the larynx (voice box) could be damaged, and the neurosurgeon admitted that vocalists often report a loss of range and flexibility in their voice after surgery.

Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Pain I would readily accept up to a certain point, in order to avoid or postpone that particular risk. Nevertheless, based on consultation with my neurosurgeon, that may be something that I have to hazard. It will come down to future risk versus present benefit, how much pain I can stand now versus how much more complicated (and clouded in outcome) the procedure would prove at a later date. Obviously, I will have more to say about this later after my next consultation.

So, this is the depressing part, and it's affected my attempt to lose weight. Between the drugs I'm having to take and the fact that I am dealing with a discouraging situation (recurrent pain, possibility of surgery), I've found it much harder to lose weight than in the past. And, while it (ahem) "pains" me to admit it, I am a year older. So, rather than drop 25 pounds in three weeks, it's been much slower.

But...huzzah! Progress is on the horizon, despite all of this negative crap, and it's the real progres that comes from hard work. There is no secret to weight loss. When asked what I do, I simply reply "Deprivation and suffering." That is....you can't eat as much as you're used to, and you need to exercise. Well, I've done both and kept at it despite a depressingly-long "plateau" which you can find in the data below. About a week ago, I did my second 4-mile hike in as many weeks and I finally moved below the 212-214 range in which I'd been yo-yoing. When I hit 209, that was my lowest weight in ten years!! Hurray!

I've persevered since then, hitting 205-point-something this morning. I had another nice long hike on Sunday evening. I've purchased several new shirts and nice new slacks for work. I've set aside my Size 42 belts (which were fraying, anyway) in favor of a Size 38. Just for kicks, I tried on a Size 34 belt today that was too big for our skinniest boy. Whaddaya know, it buckled at the last notch and I wore it very comfortably today on a pair of jean shorts. I may be in a new "plateau" now, or I may be able to keep losing. We shall see. Regardless of whether my new regime yields linear outcomes or no, this new lifestyle is here to stay....because getting my weight down, eating right and exercising are some of the best things I can do to both relieve the stress on my spine and (if needed) optimize my health for surgery.

The take-home message is that I have a significant challenge, but I am feeling better and better about how I am meeting the challenge on a daily basis. So many people are dealing with health problems so much greater than this, so I want to emphasize I am not having a 'pity party.' I thank everyone in advance for support and sympathy, but please know this: my attitude doesn't need adjustment, I'm no longer depressed by the challenge, and I am looking forward to a great year, personally. If it happens to be a year that includes a surgical procedure, then that's just the way it is.

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING (MUSIC)

Over the last several years, I've lost my way as far as being a musician goes. Actually, that's not quite true. I'm not lost, I know where I am....in a comfortable, cradling valley between peaks that stretch away from me, in the distance.

Let me explain.

For most of the last 12 years, I have worked as a musician part-time for a lovely church that I belong to, and it gives me an opportunity to use my gifts in various ways, and for the most part the congregation is very supportive of me crafting my own music. Over the years I've written a sort of mass for the dedication of a new Rodgers organ, a re-casting of some choral music by Gounod with organ and harp accompaniment, a sort of electronic tape piece with narration for Pentecost, a 5/4 rock version of 'Lyrica Davidica' for Easter, and (the last two years) a sort of "It's A Small World" set of overlapping electronic tapes for various tableaux in a live Nativity which has become a new tradition at the church. And, of course, occasional solos of my own stuff, or reworkings of existing hymns.

So, there's that.

However, I sense that unless I find some new avenues to explore, I'm going to go stale. The number of moves that, for better or worse, my wife and I partnered in have left increasingly little time and suitable space for either new recording or composing. The current house, which we leased with an option, has a wonderful location and some charm. But it's old, needs some work, and the kind of nifty 'hidden' room behind the den that I am using as a studio turned sour in May. In fact, the whole house got warm and has never really cooled down. The studio, with all the electronics, is by turns uncomfortable and really uncomfortable. So, we're moving again, into a new property just approved, and we feel very lucky to do it. It's a 'short sale', notoriously difficult to finalize in any sort of timely manner. I will be converting part of the garage from scratch and spending some real money for once on an isolated, largely sound-proofed, air-conditioned space. More on that later.

In the meantime, as part of my realization that I needed to branch out, my long-attenuated CD project "Ballistics and Fingerprints" has profited from my decision to involve more local musician talent. Since I've been away from the live performing scene in Fresno County for most of the last 20 years, I realized I would need to start broadening my social horizons and make connections with artists and musicians of real worth.

That has led me down some wonderful avenues of late:

• a South African-born ukelele player named Pieter Mordyk

• the blues harp of John Clifton (Mo Fo Party Band)

• the talents of Poplord founders Stan Schaffer and Tom Magill

• the vocal stylings of Lisa Kao (Lisa's Big Night Out) and Joy Mohler (Suicide Lounge)

....and, especially, the sympathetic ear and occasional advice of Blake Jones, who has recently also given me some opportunities to play out with his group, the wonderfully original Trike Shop. Should I recite "carpe diem" or say "thanks, but no thanks?"

Well....(pretending like this is even a difficult decision).....

My rule of thumb these days is I have little interest in playing covers, even though my last band (an oldies act led by the over-the-top-entertaining William Morris) had a very high-profile gig (opening the millenium for the new Fresno Convention Center). And, while I would like to only play originals, the reality is that I've played a lot in the past and have committed significant money and time into fmy own recording projects, the current one of which is entering (gulp) an eighth year as far as some of the original files go.

Bottom line: I have no interest in working with anyone who doesn't have a similar commitment, and who isn't a musician of similar or greater ability. No interest, none, because (as the good book says) I have no desire to be 'unequally yoked.' I know that sounds snotty, but there it is. I've got nearly four decades of musical experience as a vocalist, keyboard player, composer and choral director. I just can't be bothered with newbies, wannabes, posers or weekend rock stars. What I want is to play with, and get respect from, creative musical peers.

....so I said...."YES" in a frickin' New York minute to Blake Jones! He's generous with his time and is genuinely beloved by so many in the Fresno music scene. But, in addition to being a nice fellow, he's also just a one-of-a-kind creative force in the local community, able to bring together many different sorts of performers. He has a truly ecumenical spirit in his dealings with others, and musical tastes which are at once both eclectic and experimental. How could I possibly say 'no' to this guy, given the opportunity?

After all, the moment I first caught his act four years ago at a concert to celebrate CSUF campus radio station KFSR, I had to know more about this guy and his music. In 2009, I think I realized that his theremin would be a perfect addition to some tunes on my CD project, and documented his contributions. And, over the years, I've caught him at several shows both with his band The Trike Shop, and as part of the 'Beetles' cover band with Tom and Stan of Poplord. And the more I knew, the more I knew I would want to have a chance to work with him in some fashion.

And so, what do you know, the other day he calls me on the phone and makes this pitch. It takes him about a minute to do that, it takes me about ten seconds to say 'sign me up.' This is really the kind of gig I was looking for, that I thought I was too old, and too out of touch with the music scene, to hope for. So, in 2012 I hope to wander out of my valley of complacency and familiarity, and push myself to play out live, and to be great, and use that as a springboard to finishing my CD and moving on with my the musical part of my life.

BAM ! ! ! ! ! ! !

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE (TEACHING)

My blogging has trickled to a stop, in part because I had been wondering if I had anything new to say about the main issues that motivated me to start blogging in the first place. So much has changed in my life, and yet, as far as science education is concerned, so little. Americans are still confused about the difference between science and belief, and a depressingly large number of them neither accept the fact of evolution nor the need to ensure that the theory of evolution by natural selection (TENS) continues to be taught in the public schools.

At the same time, this last semester (and the ensuing six weeks, wherein I taught summer school) has made matters come to a head. It's time for me to start blogging again, even if I don't have any substantial new inroads to report on science education in my area. It's time for me to start doing things like this again, because I am becoming bored with certain aspects of my life, including my work setting. I enjoy teaching, but I am in danger of falling into a rut. I need to make some changes. I need to do more in some areas, but in all frankness I need to give less energy to some of the aspects of teaching that are increasingly robbing me of joy and productiveness. As a friend in high school once said (in a more colorful fashion), you have to make sure the, um, screwing is worth all the...you guessed it....screwing.

So, with that in mind, I've decided to review my own job performance for the last 11 years of teaching biology and other science coursework. What happened? How did I get to Point B from Point A? Most importantly, what has changed, has it changed for the better, and what can I do about it in order to feel useful, productive and (frankly) engaged? I don't want to burn out before I'm 50. Lord knows I see enough colleagues who are just going through the motions after this point, and I would rather do something else with my life than attempt to 'fake the funk' from now until retirement. If I taught for another 11 years, that would be fine, as long as it was as interesting and rewarding as it was prior to 2008.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The final impetus to publicly return to blogging occurred a few hours ago in my unoccupied classroom, the day after the final session of Summer School ended. I was tidying up the relics of the last few years, including....tests. Lots and lots of tests, written by me, in order to assess student performance in whatever course or courses I was teaching at the time.

That includes, in the order I taught them: Physics, Biology, Earth Science, Chemistry and Environmental Science. All of these were standards-based courses that had a state test to go with them. Three of them (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) count as laboratory science courses on the (a-g) standards for the University of California. All of them count towards my school district's requirement that students have three years of high school science. In each course, every year, I would give 9-12 unit tests which varied considerably in length and difficulty, depending in part on the subject matter, the student population that semester and the intellectual climate of the year in question. Each test typically had two versions to discourage cheating. I rarely reused tests, but typically rewrote them every year, often keeping some of the same assessment items, albeit rearrange and rewritten. Thus, each test represents a substantial investment of time in writing, and (especially in the case of Biology and Physics) rewriting.

For example, here is a shot that shows collated copies of the Physics tests that I wrote between the fall of 2000 and the spring of 2003, three years of refinement to teach the state standards in Physics. My degree is in the Natural Sciences. It's supposed to be a teaching degree, which means that I had a year of undergraduate physics coursework, plus an astronomy class. I was initially hired to teach sections of Physics and Biology with my degree, which was supposed to qualify me to teach any introductory science class in the state of California. (This was before NCLB became the be-all and end-all of teacher evaluations in this state). Anyway, if you click on the image, you'll see three years worth of the tests of which I'm bothering to keep a few copies. This does not represent all the tests I wrote, just a sample arranged in order to give me an idea what I did when, and (hopefully) help me learn from the experience.


In any and all cases, far more tests were thrown away than were ever kept. As I type this, I need to take some of these piles out to the recycling bins. By the way, the different colors serve two purposes: first, they allow me to distinguish tests within the same year from one another; second, they allow me (and my students) to distinguish at a glance which version of the test they are taking. Each clipped pile actually contains at least two different versions, sometimes (as with a semester final) three. So the above shot, just of Physics tests, actually represents about fifty (!) separate tests. This is just skimming the cream. The rest.....


....into the trash. If you do a little math, you'll recognize that this represents about 16 tests a year. When I began my teaching career, I had a little scheme all mapped out: two regular tests per each quarter, and a final, for a total of six per semester, twelve per academic year. Keep in mind that every time I'm writing a test, I'm writing at least two versions, so it's really 24 per year.

Now, I'm not claiming that each and every one of these tests is an original pearl, full-blown from the head of Zeus. In fact, after the first year, I began recycling questions. The rewriting process is an editing process. Over time, some questions seem more pertinent to the way that I actually teach, or do a better job of encapsulating some key concept and/or state standard. Also, one realizes as you go that you can do things with a test besides assess content knowledge. You can assess effort and obtain documentation about student choices. Over time, I reformatted my tests to improve their readability. I added questions with embedded graphics: charts, maps, and other images. I fussed continually not only with the general length of the test, but the relative emphasis of the various sections. From the very beginning, I have held that a simple, straightforward multiple-choice exam graded by a SCANTRON was not 'the level playing field' desired. There are always a certain number of students who are good at taking such tests, prepared or otherwise. So I would always add other types of assessments.

As you develop assessments, the inner dialogue begins: Lengthen or trim this section? Could this be reworded for clarity? Is there a concept that I am not covering well? Why do students consistently bomb this question? Should I be concerned that most don't get this question, or not? Should I reorder the section? What items to place on an answer sheet?

Hopefully the point is clear. When you rewrite tests, you are engaged in a process of assessment: assessing the course as you teach it, assessing the state standards, comparing what you've taught with what you want them to know and (sigh) what the state expects that they will know, as encompassed in the standards. If every teacher was writing and rewriting their own tests all the time in this sort of process, there would be little need for additional reflection on their own practice. This is a point that many people who are critical of 'teaching to the test' seem to miss. If you write your own tests, then teaching to the tests that you write is not mindless, but inherently self-reflective. Self-assessment through continual reinvention of your student's assessments in light of what your are teaching is far more revealing than any contrived activity mandated, top-down, by whatever hierarchy you are in, precisely because it is authentic.

The short version: While I know that there are many teachers who use the tests from the textbooks, and who simply recycle their tests from year to year, I'm not one of those people. It is those teachers whose 'teaching to the test' tends to be mindless. For me, it comes down to this: which is more likely to be an accurate and fair assessment? Drawing up a list of questions that you want to be answered, and drilling the answers into students? Or, teaching what is needed for conceptual understanding, and then crafting the assessment based upon the most recently-completed rounds of instruction?

I think you know how I would answer that question. It is an irony, then, that I have become disillusioned with the 'standards-based' reform movement's emphasis on testing. My teaching career began as these reforms were being implemented, and initially I felt I was very well aligned with that movement. The truth is, I was and remain a believer in the high-stakes test. After all, when I began my career, I intended to have 12 of them per year. Each test would take up an entire instructional period. I would give additional time at lunch and after school for those who needed it on exam days. Every test would be prepared with a Study Guide given out 2-3 days in advance of the exam date. I would almost always have a Study Session based on that Study Guide after school the day before the scheduled exam, and shamelessly bribe students to attend that Study Session. My internal logic came down to this: since my approach to writing exams involved multiple parts and continual self-assessment, I was heavily invested in the tests. Therefore, I wanted my students to be heavily invested in them. Not only did I weight them heavily, but I used significant time in the school year to prepare and administer them.

That is not, however, what most of my colleagues do. They don't invest much time in preparing or administering tests. They build what are, in my opinion, low-quality assessments that are intended to be administered in half a period, and they do so by "cutting-and-pasting" pre-fabricated questions, almost all of them multiple-choice, from the textbook or associated materials. The attitude seems to be: "Professionals have already developed questions for us to use, so why reinvent the wheel?"

Well. Duh. In order to be creative, authentic professionals yourselves. This is not to say that my colleagues aren't professionals, or shouldn't be treated as such, or that I have nothing to learn from them. Quite the contrary. I genuinely feel that in the first 6-7 years of teaching, that my colleagues were superior to me in some aspects of instruction, most notably setting up and evaluating labs and other classroom activities. I learned much that was valuable by observing them. I know that in such aspects I can still profit immensely from the experience of other veteran teachers.

I have yet, however to find another high school teacher whose tests struck me as either skilled or thoughtful. I am particularly put off by questions from the textbooks, which are invariably simplistic and misleading. And I find myself continually out of step with the agenda of most administrators and many teachers, because of the different ways in which I and others "script" the course, or as we often say, curricular sequence.

My colleagues at Bullard and throughout much of the educational system, most of them are doing their best to teach the students they are given with a series of scripts which were largely crafted for them: state standards, pacing guides, benchmark exams and departmental assessments (more on that stuff later). I, on the other hand, want to write my own script. I want the freedom to satisfy the standards following a curricular sequence that reflects my own continual self-assessment. That is what I used to do most of the time prior to the fall of 2008, and what I would prefer to do now. In my next post, I will explain why the intellectual climate within my district and my state is discouraging to me, and why I am ready to break with my past practice.

MILESTONES

So, here is is, February 9th. A project I've put a lot of time into (a proposal to adopt uniforms at my school site) is nearing the end. This evening, the FUSD Board (meeting at Yokomi Elementary) will rule first on whether to amend the district's policy on uniforms, and then almost immediately after approve or deny the Bullard School Site Council's request to implement uniforms.

I am understandably interested in the outcome, and will attend.

But is that the most important thing going on in my life? Not hardly. When I think about it, I forget to blog about the things that are the most important in my life. I tend to focus on this or that aspect of science education or personal nerdiness.

The most important thing that's happened to me, recently, however, is that my wife underwent surgery and (so far) seems to be making a rapid recovery as part of a treatment that includes changes in diet.

I took off two days last week to facilitate that. Tonight, the wife vows to do Pub Quiz....without me, since I'm committed to this school board thing. I will be thinking about her, though. She's been very brave, and very focused, and I'm very proud of her.

The next thing on my mind is that I'm slated to become a grandparent sometime this spring.

My son and his sweetie are expecting a baby girl, to be christened Savannah. I feel so fortunate that I can experience grandparenting at this stage of my life, when I should really be able to enjoy the crap out of it. I certainly hope so!

Another milestone: our oldest kid living at home (not the one with a bun in the oven) passed another one of his credentialing tests, and just missed passing the last one. There is a prospect that rescoring the tests could lead to a passing score, and without waiting for a retest date, that our spawn could pursue a full-time teaching job for the fall, with eventual independence (sigh) around the corner. That would be tremendous.

Finally, I have a student teacher this semester with a wonderful work ethic. I have really enjoyed watching her take on lesson preparation and delivery, and it really inspires me to 'up my game' and to be intentional in everything I do. Makes going to work twice as fun as normal!

UNIFORMS?

UNIFORMS?

So, let me put my cards on the table.

I'm on the Bullard School Site Council this year. Two years ago, I served as Council President, and this is my third year on the Council. One of the main responsibilities of the SSC is to rule on matters of dress code.

A parent group (Bullard Pride) has for some time maintained a presence on the SSC. Bullard Pride is heavily populated by former Bullard grads concerned about what they perceive as neglect of their alma mater by the district, to the extent that they pushed to elect the former SSC President (Michelle Asadoorian) to the Fresno Unified Board of Trustees.

They were successful in that, and Ms. Asadoorian is presently the Board's clerk.

I'm just a teacher, but I decided to cast my lot with this group and its fortunes after participating in a SSC-sponsored 'fact-finding tour' of Long Beach Unified, which drew national attention back in the mid-1990's by adopting a uniform policy for K-8, as well as converting one of their high schools (Wilson Classical High School) to uniforms. Here's a video that shows some of the things we saw and heard on that tour:




Both the district (and the Long Beach Police Department) have been extraordinarily successful at reducing crime and violence both at their school sites and within the general community.

The thought was, could adopting a school uniform policy to supplement the site's existing dress code be part of a comprehensive set of reforms, one which could address our growing safety concerns, and (along the way) promote improved attendance, school pride and academic achievment?

Our principal (Brian Beck), who did not participate in the original fact-finding effort, certainly thinks so.

The FUSD Board will discuss possible changes to board policy affecting this effort on January 26th, and then (based on that discussion) will rule on board policy on February 9th, and presumably that same evening will either give a 'thumbs up' or a 'thumbs down' on the adoption of uniforms.

I hold no illusions. Requiring uniforms in and of itself will not improve school performance across the board. I am convinced, however, that it could give BHS an edge in 'branding' itself within our community and serve as a focal point for change, as it did in Long Beach. It is a symbol that could become a sign. I am committed to making sure every Bullard student and parent knows about it, understands their options and considers what might possible if a community finds a common vision for excellence.

We shall see.