Detention

A New School Year...

Well another school year has started here in good ol' California. Last August, the state budget office got together with all of the school district superintendents and told them just how much money they had and gave them suggestions on where to spend it depending on what kind of situation their district was in. Last year the teachers in my district bit the bullet so to speak and reduced the cost of health care to our district and saved them some big bucks. The state said there was enough money in the pot to give everyone in all districts a 4.5 per cent Cost of Living Allowance ( COLA ) and that they should make sure that pass it along to their employes. Its not often that the state budget office says something like that, but they did. They did it in front of reporters, California Teachers Association representatives, and superintendents from all over the state. Now one would think that the superintendents would follow the advice of the state budget office. One would think that keeping your employes happy would be a priority in these difficult times. Was I shocked and dismayed to find out that my superintendent, Robert Hodges, told our Association president, Rich Laabs, that the district was 3.5 million in the hole and that there would not be any money for Cost of Living Allowances.
Our district has a very solid backup savings account for emergencies. Last time I checked it was twice the amount that our district says its deficit is. So why the outright lie? Where did the 4.5 per cent for a COLA go? Last time I looked COLA stood for COST OF LIVING ALLOWANCE not, buy more books allowance or pay for cost overruns on construction projects. Of all the things a district can do, this is the one thing that can piss off a majority of teachers. Teachers have the power. Test scores can drop, the district can go down the tubes test wise and and the state will have to step in and run it. The teachers could strike. There has never been a strike in Redlands. Why? Because past superintendents and Boards of Education have treated the teachers very nice. Why not now? This area has grown so fast, classes are so crowded, and there is more pressure to raise test scores, even if those scores are meaningless! Yes Redlands is a nice place to work, but that is changing. I have 173 students this year! that's about 34 students per class. Studies show that the optimal student to teacher ratio is 15 to 18 to 1! Not only that but I have students who are non-english speakers. One of my classes has 9 RSP students in it and 26 regular ed. students. The point of all this is that we deserve the 4.5 percent COLA. We earn every cent that we are paid. Its the least the district can do is keep our pay in line with the cost of living. Teachers work on a 10 month contract, so they only get paid for 10 months. If we have summer jobs, the income is taxed at 40% because it is considered a luxury income. The pay is $32.22 per hour. That is about half of what a teacher with a masters degree earns. If I work overtime ( like teach and extra period) I get an hourly wage $30. By the time taxes are taken out its $22! Teaching is the only job where you work overtime and get half the hourly wage. Everywhere else you would get time and a half! The COLA is an important item for us this year... just because we teach does not mean we don't live in the real world. Our cost of living has risen with everyone elses. Robert Hodges... give us the 4.5 percent COLA. Its time for you to bite the bullet for once.

Proof love at first sight exists ! Duh!!!

Love at first sight may not be just for old romantics, according to scientists. It turns out that people decide what kind of relationship they want within minutes of meeting, this according to a study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Researchers at Ohio State University paired off 164 students, focusing on same-sex friendships - but said it could be applied to dating. Report co-author Artemio Ramirez said it suggested speed dating had value as people did not want to waste time. "It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. We make a prediction about what kind of relationship we could have with a person and that helps determine how much effort we are willing to put into developing a relationship. "If I think we could become friends, I'll communicate more, tell you more about myself and do things that will help ensure a friendship does develop. "If I have a more negative prediction about a future relationship then I will restrict communication and make it harder to develop."
Professor Ramirez, who conducted the study with Michael Sunnafrank of the University of Minnesota, said it contradicted previous assumptions. "Earlier research had assumed there was a cumulative effect that happens in the first days of meeting that helps determine how relationships will develop. "But we're finding that it all happens much sooner than that - literally within a few minutes." After the first meeting, which lasted between three, six and ten minutes, the students completed a questionnaire which asked them to predict how they envisaged a future relationship developing. They also stated how much they had in common and how much they liked the person they had just met.

Nine weeks later the participants were asked what kind of relationship had developed. People who rated the potential relationship more positively tended to sit closer to their partner during class and talk more to that person.
After nine weeks, they were more likely to have developed a close relationship, the study found. The results were the same for people who talked for three, six or ten minutes. Prof Ramirez said: "That tells you things are happening very quickly. People are making snap judgements about what kind of relationship they want with the person they just met."

Gee... and it took them all this time to figure it out..... Such is life!

Later,

Dr. Know

Social Science Rules! Defoliate Bush in 2004!

Freebagging??? Ok... I guess its a down under thing....

The Thong Thing. Is it a new fashion trend? Nope. Is it a bathing suit? Not this one. Read on and all will be exposed... so to speak.

Move over, Victoria's Secret. Women's underwear has a new shape with the advent of an Australian design -- the backless thong. The backless thong? Humm. Now that's a mental picture to hold onto. Jan Digney, who lives on Australia's Gold Coast, had a visible G-string problem and asked her daughters for advice. They told their mom that they "freebag it." "We don't wear undies, Mum." Mom's response? "Well, there's got to be something out there to stop people from doing that." So some Fifty-odd prototypes later, Mrs. Digney came up with a pair of undies that have bra-style straps that tuck under the cheeks of the wearers butt. "It's like freebagging but you're protected," she says. Um, protected from what? What would you wear that would necessitate one using a backless thong? Jan and her husband Chuck have spent $300,000 on the first run of 35,000. The challenge, says Chuck, is to get people to believe they stay up. Stay up??? Is that the only thing they have to do to make their product successful? One wonders just what the ladies are wearing ... ah hem, down under.... oh bad pun... I know, I know....

Later,

Mr. T

Social Science rules!
Defoliate Bush in 2004!

The Pokia ... Return to the future?

Greetings to you all. Well summer school is over and I am free for the next 3 weeks. What a different 6 weeks its been. I had 45 students for the 1st "semester" read: first 3 weeks, and 39 students for the 2nd semester. I was teaching high school US history, Pre-history to the present! The class was 4 hours long and we did a chapter a day. It was like teaching a seminar class. The students were mostly high achievers, but the testing results were puzzling. Half the class consistently failed the chapter tests, but the did well on the midterm and final. And these were 11th graders. Oh well. I had to deal with the cell phone issue for the first time this summer. I caught several students text messaging answers in class, no they were not test answers but homework answers. Man they did a lot of typing on their phones, and they all got the answers... wrong! Sigh! Speaking of phones, have you heard of the latest in cell phones? Its an old fashioned telephone handset, wired to your cell phone. Read on for more info.

Newfangled cell phones sure are nifty. But some people wax nostalgic for the heavy-duty telephone receivers of the '60s and '70s. At least that's what Nicholas Roope is banking on. The Londoner has wired an old phone handset to a concealed cell phone; his invention, called the Pokia, has landed him on the covers of magazines and in newspapers in the United Kingdom, Sweden and the United States. Roope says as futuristic cell phones get smaller and more powerful, design becomes less important. "The very simple, robust, focused, single-minded design loses its way," he says. Plus, he adds, the Pokia's a great way to get dates. "The first thing that happens is people say: 'Does it work?' And then inevitably you say: 'Phone me on it.' Then you have their number." From Wired News 7/30/04 Do a google search on Pokia and check out Nicholas's web page.

Later,

Mr. T

Social Science Rules!
Defoliate Bush in 2004!

Sex and Money... more money does not get you more sex....

Can you tell its summer yet???? Well there is good news for the loveless and impoverished. According to a study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, more money does not lead to more sex. The bureau, known more for its determination of U.S. business cycles, found that "sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations," but that, "greater income does not buy more sex, nor more sexual partners." The group found that, while most Americans make the beast with two backs two to three times per week, only 6 percent of high-income respondents had sex four or more times a week, compared with 8 percent of the low-income group. (Less technology in those homes??) Researchers also found that happy people tend to have sex more frequently, but said the cause and effects were unclear. Now, I wonder if the looked at the size of ones wad when they were researching this information????

Later,

Mr. T.

Social Science Rules!

Defoliate Bush in 2004!

Get Buried Naked!!! Well at least without all those chemicals.....

And Now for Something Completely Deferent! What was old, very old is a new Idea again..... Are you one of those "eco-nuts?" Do you recycle everything? Do you have a "green toilet?" If so, then this service may be just what you are looking for especially if you aspire to leave no trace after you exit your mortal coil. A Marin County, California, business offers perhaps the ultimate carbon-neutral service: a nature preserve cemetery, where the deceased can be buried in a biodegradable box or nothing at all. "We do the dust-to-dust approach where people decay naturally," Kimberley Campbell, one of the owners of Memorial Ecosystems, told the Marin Independent Journal. People would be buried on about three acres of the 32-acre site; the remainder would be left as open space. "Our goal is to create a nature preserve with a cemetery function, but people could be married there or have their child baptized there or plant a tree," Campbell said. She allayed fears that wild animals might dig up the bodies. "When people are buried under seven feet of dirt, an animal is not going to dig them up."

Later,

Mr. T

Social Science Rules!
Defoliate Bush in 2004!

Are you addicted to Chocolate? hummmm, could be!

Before I was diagnosed with diabetes ( that was last February...) I would eat chocolate in binges. A quarter pound of See's English Toffee was heaven. A Bordeaux butter cream egg... wonderful! I often thought, why did I crave these things? They are made with quality ingredients and in small batches and mostly by hand. Was it the quality? Well it appears that was not the case. In a recent study researchers have found that people who say they are addicted to chocolate or pizza may not be exaggerating. A brain scan study of normal, hungry people showed their brains lit up when they saw and smelled their favorite foods in much the same way as the brains of cocaine addicts when they think about their next snort. "Food presentation significantly increased metabolism in the whole brain (by 24 percent) and these changes were largest in superior temporal, anterior insula, and orbitofrontal cortices," These areas of the brain are associated with addiction. So, what does all of this mean to you and me? For most of us, it means being overweight is due to an addiction to certain foods. Now, this is not an excuse for being overweight, just an explanation. An estimated 30 percent of Americans are obese, meaning they have a body mass index of more than 30. This ratio of height to weight usually works out to being about 30 pounds overweight for a woman and 35 to 40 pounds overweight for a man. Wang and colleagues studied 12 men and women with an average age of 28. The volunteers fasted for just under a day and then underwent positron emission tomography, or PET scans, which measure brain metabolism. They were asked to describe their favorite foods and how they like to eat them while they were presented with some of those foods. "A cotton swab impregnated with the food was placed in their tongues so they could taste it," the researchers wrote. "The favorite food items most frequently selected by the subjects were bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, cinnamon bun, pizza, hamburger with cheese, fried chicken, lasagna, barbecue, ice cream, brownie, and chocolate cake." So... does this negate the concept of free will? I dunno...Several leading addiction experts worked on the report including Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Oh, by the way I was weighing in at 350 lbs. last Feb. Then I was told I had diabetes... I really don't want to spend the rest of my life in a wheel chair with my feet cut off because I did nothing to deal with this condition. I went to classes, learned about foods, found a really neat software program for my PDA that keeps records of what I eat, what my glucose level is and how much medication I take. I have lost 50 lbs! Without any feeling of starvation. Could it be the fear of amputation that has helped me loose weight? Sure, but I also just kept records and I found out that I was eating 1800 calories instead of 2000. That was enough for me to loose weight. The really good part about all of this is the weight appears to be staying off! If I can do this... so can you! oh... if you want the name of the software and the url where you can D/L a trial package... drop me a comment and I'll get back to you.

later,

Mr. T

Social Science Rules!

The weekend...

What a strange week this has been. Screaming in Iowa, Bush hyping the political troops in DC, and Arnold doing the tax dance here in California. I don't understand why the volume of the voice can make reporters go overboard. So Dean was hyped up, so he was trying to motivate his supporters. Was it all taken out of context by the press? It appears so. In the rush to have the most "newsworthy" stories, the most important facts are usually left out. Its an old game. Telling half-truths, twisting a story to make it more sensational than it is. In the days of William R. Hurst it was called Yellow Journalism. Now its called Headlines that sell. Same difference. As John Adams would have said, "Disgusting!."
The State of the Union message by the Bushman is having an effect on the op-ed writers. Most of what I have read is not very complemented. Bush wants to reduce the debt by 200 Billion by 2009. Most of the people who understand the Federal budget say this is next to impossible. More Smoke and mirrors. The desire of Bush to go to Mars and the Moon was another smoke and mirrors job. It was a diversion tactic so Bush could cut funding to the space shuttles and the space station while appearing to give NASA a hearty slap on the back.
Here in California, Arnold is being sued by the student union of the University of California. They say he did not have the authority to roll back the Auto tax increase, and that the "fiscal" emergency was one of his own making. The state assembly has the power to deal with money not the governor so Arnold acted illegally they contend. There is a grass roots movement afoot to remove public school funding from the yearly tax battle in Sacramento. Its called the School Improvement Act. Money generated by this act could only be used for books, site improvements, supplies and teachers compensation. It could not be use for administrative overhead. I'll have more on this as I have time to research it.
Gotta go and prune some roses...

Later,

Mr. T
Social Science Rules!

This was the week that was.... or What Happened???

Man oh man, do I feel whipped. Don't get me wrong, I am feeling happy but its been a week of emotional ups and downs. We put my mother in law to rest yesterday in the Riverside National cemetery. ( She was a Navy Vet.) How fitting to place her remains in the cemetery on her birthday. Makes for a complete cycle. They do a very nice ceremony for the living there. They do an honor guard rifle salute and a flag ceremony. Then they present the flag and the spent shells to the family.

Well, I see the IMF has issued a report saying the U.S. is on very shaky financial grounds due to the Bush administrations penchant for spending everything and then going into debt to keep operating. But wait! There's more! This administration has damaged our economy, reduced our environmental protections and conducted a foreign policy that has won our nation distrust and contempt throughout the world. Their lavish tax cuts for corporate special interests and wealthy Americans have turned our five trillion dollar budget surplus into record deficits. Now our nation lacks funds to strengthen Social Security, improve health care, offer a real prescription drug benefit, and invest in better schools. Bush is speeding up the process of dividing America in two. Is it any wonder that Bush wants to make an illegal action, legal? Think of all those immigrants who followed the rules and made the grade and became citizens. Now Bush wants to give it away. Why? The cynic in me says its to keep a very large work force of people who will be willing to work for below standard wages just to have a job in America. Why is Bush doing this during an election year? To get the Hispanic vote? I think so.

It looks like there will be plenty to write about this year. Hope you had a good Holiday season.

Later,

Mr. T

Social Science Rules!

Heaven...

Well, it finally happened. 11pm Sunday, 12/28/03. My mother-in-law died. After spending 4 weeks in and out of the Hospital and the convalescent home, with increasing amounts of pain and nothing that could be done for her except give her morphine. Her death was a release from the pain caused by the colon cancer and the blockages that occurred from the tumors in the colon. Her final days were spent in and out of sleep due to the drug. My wife spent 9 hours at her mom's bedside yesterday, went out to lunch with her daughter, came home, relaxed, went to bed and then we got the phone call. The 4 children are all dealing with this death in their own way. From hysterical to relief. This is the first death of a close family member for them, so it is/was a new experience for them. R.I.P. Louise.

So, what happens next? What are the options for people who are dying? Now, I know that sounds kind of wierd, but think about it. If you have a strong faith in religion, you have a structure for dealing with death. This is where good works come in handy. Heaven or Hell? good works are the deciding factor. If you are an agnostic.... Then the organic system has finally given out and decomposition settles in and the body returns to its basic component parts. Some water, and some chemicals. Now you may be thinking, what about ones soul? Ah, that begs the question, what is the soul? This is where it gets stickily. From a clinical point of view, nobody have ever scientifically observed a soul. So all that we know about souls is based in faith. That means there are many ways to look at the concept of soul and what happened to that soul when you die.
Science and the scientific method emphasize certain aspects of life and ignore others. One has to turn to philosophy to explore the ideas ignored by science. Philosophy seeks completeness and a comprehensive answer to questions. The Greek view of man (man,meaning all people... not just men. Yeah, I know its not PC.... so sue me.) as a rational being is OK as it goes, but it is not complete. The Christian emphasis on man as a creature whose life has meaning in a meaningful universe, on the worth and dignity of each person, and on love and social-mindedness in human relations is sound and a very necessary in our society today. So...just what is a soul? A soul can be defined as the vital, immaterial life principle, generally conceived as existing within human beings and sometimes within all living things, inanimate objects, and the universe as a whole. In more primitive religions (forms of animism and spiritism), the soul is thought to control both motor and mental processes; death, the cessation of these processes, is thus viewed as caused by the departure of the soul. Pantheism denies the individuation of human souls, and materialism declares the soul nonexistent. A widespread concept in religion is that of immortality, which usually postulates the existence of a soul that lives apart from the body after death. Dualistic concepts posit a God-given soul distinct from, and antagonistic to, an inferior, earth-bound body. For many Western philosophers the term soul is indefinable. Others consider soul synonymous with mind. You got all that???? Good. Now go out and nourish your soul with a beer... So I am back to where I started. What happens to the soul/self after death? My conclusion? It leaves and attends the largest party you have ever thought of.

Wow! I have not used so many polysyllabic words since I wrote my thesus!

later,

Mr. T

Social Science Rules!