Writerly

This morning a friend sent a link to "all [her] writerly friends," and for some reason included me.  That's the nicest compliment I've gotten in a while.  And it gave me a post for today.  I see no reason to decide which effect was more important.

btw the link was to today's XKCD, which is always a great comic, but today's was especially good.

From the Inside

Driving home from lunch, I hit a very sudden storm - completely dry roads to steady rain instantaneously.  Just as my windshield wipers got into a rhythm and traffic moved steadily again, the rain transitioned to dry road almost as suddenly.  Less than two miles wide, the squall made everyone adapt to rainy weather, and without warning abruptly stopped.

Too much of life is like this: sudden problems arise and disappear before I solve them, but the adaptation is far more stressful than flicking on windshield wipers.  It becomes easy to assume problems will just go away, and not respond until emergencies arise.  There must be a middle ground where I don't wear myself out on two-mile squalls, but also don't find myself unprepared in a hurricane.  From the inside, however, most of these storms look the same.

Get Low

Get Low is an independent movie (although it was playing at a local Tinseltown) set in Depression-era Tennessee.  It features Robert Duvall as a hermit who wants to buy his funeral service, except he wants it while he's still alive.  Duvall is excellent as always, and Bill Murray as the funeral director expresses himself more diversely than I expected, even better than his role in Lost In Translation.  The acting is incredible even beyond those two, and the photography takes advantage of great hill country.  (What can I say?  I like trees.)

Unfortunately the story doesn't shine as strongly.  It makes sense, which probably puts it in the top 10% of movie scripts, but the tension and mystery build to a revelation that doesn't expand the drama, merely sufficing to fill in the gaps.  The ending isn't bad, it's just not what you might think the rest of the story promised.

The acting alone is worth the price of a ticket, but enjoy the ride, because that's all you'll get.

Goals: Round 1

Not much progress towards all-encompassing life goals, but I will pursue a few goals from Goals 0.0.  I want a Health goal because it's important, a Communication goal because that frustrates me so much, and a Nerdness goal because ... well, it's fun.  Today's winners are:

Health: Slam dunk a basketball successfully on 5 consecutive tries.

Nerdness: Memorize the major bodies of water in the world.  I've got it narrowed down to 211.*

Communication: Keep up this blog.  I've written a post for each of the last 30 days, but I want to hit 100 before adding another goal, so we'll revisit this on November 10.

I'll further elaborate the first two goals and my approaches in later posts, but for now, let the games begin!


*I found my spreadsheet for memorizing all 50 U.S. states and capitals, and have them down again.  Feel free to quiz me on this in any way at any point in time - gotta stay on my toes.

In Praise of Excellence

I've watched as much as possible of Team USA's preparation and entry into the 2010 FIBA World Championships.  (fyi it's basketball)  Many fans aren't interested because most of our opponents are severely overmatched, making those games blowouts.  I love blowouts!  We need close games every so often to keep the tension alive, but a blowout allows players to show the limits of what they can push themselves to - Durant tapping a steal around his man and taking it all the way down the court for a 2-handed slam, Iguodala stealing the ball before the ballhandler knows he's there.  When winning's out of the equation, they can focus on their basketball art and give us the elemental thrill that first made us love the game.  The losing team gets to do the same as their best players take more initiative and wow us.  In a true blowout, even the backups strut their stuff.

I'd never want a season without close games - any champion needs to be tested to earn the title - but a few blowouts make for relaxed enjoyment as well, and a reminder of what makes the best players so excellent.

Challenge Accepted

A Facebook comment on my Goals 0.0 post suggested I should tackle memorizing the major bodies of water in the world first.  I figure why not - it's as good a direction as any.  But now what list do I use?  I can find a list of 31, 147, or over 700 (more than half of these are rivers).  147 feels like a solid compromise, but I'm open to suggestions.

Keeping Score, Take 2

My cousin Eric, a psychiatrist, posted the following comment on yesterday's blog post about teacher evaluations, and it's worth discussing for another day.

Charles, this is an issue that we struggle with in medicine too. There is a strong push to rate doctors, but there is huge disagreement as to how to do it fairly. Every doctor, when faced with being ranked on their outcomes, claims that their patients are sicker than their colleagues', and so any comparison would be apples to oranges. This is of course true of some of them, but can't be true of all of them, logically. So we need a way of ranking just how sick the patients are to begin with (or, for teachers, just how much "potential" each student might have?). Another thorny problem is the fact that teachers and doctors and other professionals deal with human beings (as opposed to, say, widgets), and that humans have a way of doing what they want to do regardless of what their teachers or doctors try to persuade or "make" them do. We just don't have the same control over our "product" as many other workers do. Thirdly, the measurement process cannot be more burdensome than the job itself, however to really do it in ways that capture all the qualities you want in a teacher or doctor or whatever, it seems like it might have to be. Test scores are easy to measure, but don't tell the whole story, just as blood glucose levels or cholesterol levels or scores on a depression questionnaire are easy to measure but don't tell the whole story about what makes a good doctor. But the data is easy to get, so this is what is measured. It's like the old joke about the drunk guy looking for his keys under the streetlight, when he lost them 50 feet away. When asked why he was looking there, he replied "because that's where the light is."

I agree with you that teachers, and doctors, should be evaluated to encourage improvement in quality. The measurement problem, however, is formidable. 

Excellent points on the measurement problem, but our products might not be that different.  There was a "good ole days" (and might still be some good ole employers) when a computer system made up the entire product.  However, we now deliver the ability for our customers to achieve their goals.  We can't just provide an Inventory Report - we validate the inventory data, allow users to modify incorrect numbers, and lock a final version.  Only then can the client confidently use the Inventory Report for budgeting and planning.  I had clients who gave us terrible data files, made a mishmash of modifying it in every way possible, and blamed us for their decisions based on their own data (fortunately, we don't have any of these at S3).  Protecting clients against themselves takes far more time than building the reports, our official output.  People are messy.


I'm not minimizing the added difficulty of dealing with patients/students - my doctor's a saint for putting up with me, and teachers are the most patient people I know.  At some point, though, the outcome is all that matters, regardless of the subject or circumstance.  We may not have enough metadata about education to achieve that level of measurement rigor*, but teachers need to define and enforce their own evaluation, or others will arbitrarily impose easy-to-get metrics like the value-add score.


I know teachers who evaluate their own efforts and work to improve their evaluation, but I've never seen a group/union/department adopt outcome-based standards with any accountability.  I'm sure exceptions exist, but this needs to be a broad trend in education to improve teachers' public image, and, most importantly, students' educations.


*Not that I'm an education expert, but I know so much less about medical practice that I have no idea how much this applies to your field.