Bookworm Room

My Dad was a teacher, and he worked like a dog.  Of course, back in the day, he got a salary that was only slightly above poverty level, so his hard work wasn’t really the teaching itself.  Instead, it was all the private lessons he gave on the side.  He put in as many hours [...]

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A classic Seinfeld episode concerned George Costanza’s decision (at Kramer’s urging) to park in a handicapped zone.  This being George, things went drastically wrong.  What I remember from the episode, though, isn’t the cascading sequence of disasters; instead; it’s the opprobrium heaped upon George for parking in the blue.  His parking decision wasn’t treated as [...]

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As I understand it, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, faced with a $3.6 billion biennial budget deficit (for the years 2011-2013), had the choice of raising taxes in his financially beleaguered state or firing up to 6,000 state employees.  He chose a third route, proposing that Wisconsin’s public sector employees start carrying a small portion of [...]

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I am crazy abut this politician: We have some spectacular young guns in the conservative party.  The problem is timing.  I don’t know if any will be ready by 2012, and it may be too late by 2016.

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This is a portmanteau post, filled with interesting things I read today, some of which come in neatly matched sets. Opening today’s San Francisco Moronicle, the first thing I saw was that an illegal teen’s arrest is causing a stir in San Francisco’s halls of power.  You see, San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and [...]

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One of my main bases for hostility to teacher’s unions is that increasingly have nothing to do with their original goal, which was ensuring a living wage and decent working conditions for teachers.  (Not that they were always that effective at serving their original union mandate.  My father was a teacher and he did belong [...]

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I think most of us watched Randy Pausch’s last lecture, delivered when he was retiring due to terminal cancer.  Although the cancer finally claimed Pausch, the messages about getting the most out of life, about living with joy and immediacy, linger on.  Charles Lipson, himself a teacher, concludes that Pausch not only taught life lessons, [...]

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. . . but this is sad: Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France. A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to MRAP. [...]

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