perfidy

That's my elitist line in the sand, elicited by a polemical editorial in - of all places - USA Today about how textbooks are making our children stupider. Readers of Diane Ravitch's The Language Police will be familiar with the contours of the argument, and I think everybody out there who reads weblogs at all has lamented at some point the sorry state of our public schooling. It's as easy as poisoning pigeons in the park. But, MAN.

From the piece:

Take the McDougal Littell text that we finally adopted for 9th- and 10th-graders. It starts off with a unit titled "Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hebrew Literature," followed by sections on the literature of Ancient India, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient China and Japan. Then comes "Persian and Arabic Literature" and "West African Oral Literature" — and that's only the first third of the book. There are still more than 800 pages to plough through, but it's the same drill — short excerpts from long works — a little Dante here, a little Goethe there and two whole pages dedicated to Shakespeare's plays. One even has a picture of a poster from the film Shakespeare in Love with Joseph Fiennes kissing Gwyneth Paltrow. The other includes the following (which is sure to turn teens on to the Bard):

"Notice the insight about human life that the following lines from The Tempest convey:

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Shakespeare's plays are treasures of the English language."

They are? Well goody! And Leo DiCaprio stars!

Allow me to preen for a moment, because I got lucky in high school. Well not lucky in the usual sense; I was a Quiz Team geek and our type didn't have willing groupies, but lucky in a larger sense. You see, my poor backward rural cow-town in the rust flats of Ohio was blessed with one Mr. Speece, an elderly English teacher who presided over Intensive English I-IV. Over four years, the curriculum went as follows:

Freshman year - American writers: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, Katherine Ann Porter, etc.
Sophomore year - British writers: Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde, Hardy, Maugham, Chaucer (unexpurgated), Beowulf
Junior Year - Continental and Russian writers: Dante, Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Turgenev
Senior Year - More of the same, but Frencher, plus drama: Balzac, Proust, Ibsen, Checkov.

Every finished book required a five-page expository essay explicating some aspect of the work. We were graded on spelling, grammar, clarity, cogency, and concision of argument. Our sophomore-year midterm consisted of memorizing and writing out in class 500 lines of poetry of our choice. The final: 1000 lines.

Thanks to Daniel Speece, I learned what Spanish Fly is, what "do a Cattleya" means in A Recherce du Temps Perdu, and how to fold and tear a calling card to convey to a lady I call upon that I'd like to have sex with her at some future date. Yes, I hated Hemingway and thought Anna Karenina was turgid and dense, but having read and though about those texts prepared me for college and in some very important ways for life. And without getting too snooty-snooty elitist about it, I'm very happy to have had the chance to read all these books and carry away from them a rich sense of the breadth of human experience. Revenge takes so many forms: Othello's betrayal, Eustacia Vye accidental vengeance, Mrs. Treadwell watching herself dispassionately as she beats a pattern of crimson half moons in Danny's unconscious face with her high heel. Ditto love; whether Anna K's final solution, Hamlet's roiling mix of love and hatred or poor Philip Carey's pathetic mooning after his dull and worthless Mildred. None of these things would make it anywhere near most high school English curricula today, and I think we are poorer for it.

Reason mag has a good discussion of this editorial with some great comments including this priceless illustration of what I like to call "the problem:"

When I taught Shakespeare, I was saddened that the kids would laugh at "What ho!" but completely miss the sexual innuendo in something like Mercutio saying, "the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon."

Part of what separates us from dogs and robots is our shared heritage, and without that we become something less than complete. This goes double if you can't even recognize a simple dick-joke. It's why I became a (failed, apostate) historian and it's why I get so exercised about junk like this. I'd rather not homeschool my children; my wife and I both like to work. But it looks like I'm going to have to.

[wik] One of the problems with blogging is that it's so off-the-cuff. Some writers seem to thrive in that format; I don't know if I do. My pieces come out better and more fully formed if I give them time to marinate.

My biggest problem, out of many, with the textbook example excerpted above is that the sentence "Shakespeare's plays are treasures of the English language" is in itself an empty assertion. A person cannot simply read that statement along with two pages of disembodied quotations from larger works and understand in any way why people think Shakespeare is so great, much less how they might think it is so.

I can tell a child that "fire is hot; it burns," or "someday a woman will break your heart; you will want to die" but one of the tragedies of life is that we all have to live it for ourselves. If I could endure every burn and heartbreak for my (future; as yet theoretical) child, I would in a second. If I could open their eyes to the boundless invention and sheer joy of Shakespeare's prose, I would in a second.

But for one thing. To know something, really know it, you have to go through it ready or not. That's what life is all about. And for every burn, for every heartbreak, for every petty cruelty heaped upon an already straining back by the business of daily living, there is a Shakespeare, a Heinlein, a Chandler, a Bible, shit, even a Nightmare on Elm Street to show you there are greater and more wondrous things in the realm of human experience than you ever knew.

A teacher's job, ideally, is to lead students to the point where they can realize this for themselves. For a teacher cannot instill; they can only create the opportunity for learning. But if we don't give teachers even the chance to do that, if we deaden the pleasures and pains in the lessons in the name of 'diversity' or 'moral hygiene,' than we make it a teacher's job to raise intellectual veals.

Shakespeare isn't great until you've picked your wordy way through Othello or Macbeth, gotten inside the language, been smacked in the face with a wet woolen glop of alien-yet-familar genius and come away a little changed. Before that it's just "fain prithee jakes petard; forsooth! bawdy bedpresser, for lo thine shivers I see!"

"Shakespeare's plays are treasures of the English language" in the same way that "it really hurts to break your leg."

Loyal readers will remember that I have extolled the virtues of master conguero Poncho Sanchez before, in reviews of a budget best-of (Instant Party!) and a live DVD; hopefully some of you have enriched your life with one of these by now. But the question still stands: is a Poncho Sanchez album even close to as good as a best-of compilation of the most memorable bits of several albums?

That is not a sure bet either way. I’d rather listen to Strictly Commercial any day than listen to many of the Frank Zappa albums that contributed a song to that compilation (Zoot Allures? Ugh!). On the other hand, Aerosmith’s so-called Greatest Hits package is an embarrassment throughout the entire B side, and the whole production is not as strong as even one of the studio albums it draws from, A Night in the Ruts excepted.

For Do It!, his new studio recording for Concord Picante, Poncho Sanchez returns to his tried-and-true strategy of locking funk and soul in a room with Latin and seeing who emerges alive. Mixing these three genres is a fantastic idea rich with possibilities, the musical equivalent of a red 1968 Impala tricked out with a crushed-velvet interior and a chandelier. It has sustained him for more than twenty years now, and it seems from Do It that the old ride does have a lot of miles left on it. Sanchez and his band offer eleven tracks that for the most part do stand up to the material cherry-picked for his best-of and live sets.

The key to staying fresh is variety, and to keep things lively Sanchez and crew team for two tracks with South African legend Hugh Masekela, and for two tracks with the entire lineup of Tower of Power.

Within the confines of Sanchez’ signature sound, Do It! is satisfyingly diverse. Although they don’t reach the dizzying heights of their live shows, the band are tight and sound especially good on the title song and a burbling take on Duke Ellington’s “African Flower.”

More interesting are the collaborations, which are a study in contrasts. Tower of Power are known for producing precise machine-tooled grooves that some people consider among the funkiest around. I have never cared much for them, finding their shiny perfection somewhat airless and decidedly un-funky. Combining Sanchez’ pulsating, lively conga style with ToP’s up-and-down sound on “Squib Cakes” and “Shotgun Slim” results a combination that lets some air into ToP’s rhythm section and some smoothness into their vamps. Although the results still sound too much like Tower of Power for my taste, these tracks do really cook (my personal biases aside).

Sanchez’ two tracks with African jazz and Afrobeat legend Hugh Masekela are another thing entirely. Masekela has played with everybody – Fela Kuti, Herb Alpert, and Paul Simon are all on his resumé – and he has had careers in bop, R&B, pop, Afrobeat, and African jazz. Such versatility serves him well in his two vocal contributions to the record, the Latin-flavored “Ha Lese Le Di Khanna” and the slightly Afrobeat “Child of the Earth.” Masekela’s sensibility is undeniably African, and he and the band meet in the middle to create an interesting Latin-African hybrid sound that deserves an album or five of its own. It’s only a shame that Masekela doesn’t seem to have brought his flugelhorn to the sessions.

West and South African music styles from the Guinea coast to Capetown rely on different rhythmic sensibilities than do Latin music styles. Whereas Latin sounds tend to subdivide the pulse into tiny, syncopated bits that clatter into each other like ball bearings falling onto a marble floor, African bands tend to sound bouncier. Even when using nearly identical instruments – hand drums, for instance – African players tend to make their grooves rounder, more flowing, than a Latin player would. Granted, this is not universal (rhumba comes to mind as an exception), but a general rule. Another is this: many indigenous styles of African music use melodies that sound to American ears nearly conversational, using different rules of tension-and-release and phrasing than we are used to.

All this is a little surprising, considering that Latin music gets its rhythmic complexity from African traditions, though centuries ago and now changed beyond recognition. Still, if critics can find plenty of common ground between Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure and blues great John Lee Hooker, why is there not as much evident similarity between say, Tito Puente and Fela Kuti’s Africa 70?

While all this might only illustrate my own basic ignorance, I have to say: the sound created by the combination of Poncho Sanchez’ band playing a little “African” and Hugh Masekela responding to the Latin rhythms on “Ha Lese Le Di Khanna” point to a potentially very fruitful (and funky) style of music ripe for exploration. Lafrobeat? Afritan? Soukousalsa?

So, yes: Poncho Sanchez can make an album that stands up to his best-of. That is the mark of a consistent artist. In fact, Do It! is actually more satisfying, leaving aside the wall-to-wall guests-and-gimmickry that Instant Party had in favor of hot charts, good playing, and intriguing collaborations that point at more good things to come. He, um, er, ah... does it.

This morning on NPR, Buzzmachine heard Rick Santorum sum up why my short flirtation with the Republican party a few years back is over for good, unless they do something to get rid of "conservatives" like him.

This whole idea of personal autonomy — I don’t think that most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. And they have this idea that people should be left alone to do what they want to do, that government should keep taxes down, keep regulation down, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, that we shouldn’t be involved in cultural issues, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world. And I think that most conservatives understand that we can’t go it alone, that there is no such society that I’m aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and it has succeeded as a culture.

If I read this correctly, real conservatives want to manage my bedroom behavior, raise taxes, regulate everything, prohibit unsavory cultural activities, and make sure people can't just do whatever they want. Personal autonomy: bad. Government control of behavior: good.

Now I know that some folks might claim that Rick Santorum is an outlier, that he does not speak for conservatism and its place in the Republican party. That would be a fine argument, Margaret, if only he weren't the third-ranking Republican in the Senate and therefore one of the national spokesmen and leaders of the conservative movement. No, Rick Santorum's conservatism is part of the Republican party just like Bill Clinton's wang is part of his body. It may be ugly, it may jump out of his pants at inopportune times and get him into a peck of trouble, it may be shameful and creepy when it rules his mind, but it's an inextricable part of his identity, part of who he is.

The howler is, of course, that Short Bus Santorum is construing "radical individualism" as a threat to the American way of life. Right. "individualism" like "liberty" and "radical" like "for all."

As Buzzmachine observes,

That’s not radical. That is the center of America. That is where most of us live — in let-us-be land. Santorum lives on the fringe, right neighborly with the PC folks who would tell us what to think and say. Yes, the far right and far left do, indeed, meet at the fringes....

God, I hope this guy makes a run in ought-eight. I have a hankering to watch him get torn to pieces in the public arena. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

As previously noted, I took a leave of absence last weekend to travel to Savannah in the great state of Georgia to visit my sister and my newly arrived nephew, Sir David the Astonishingly Hirsute. They're both fine.

An added benefit of my trip was that my birthday is coming soon, and therefore I ate particularly well. Every year around my birthday, Chainsaw treats me to a giant seafood blowout the likes of which you have never seen. This year we had a cookout during which I began eating at 4 in the afternoon and didn't really stop until 3 the following morning.

The menu:

• Gigantic bucketsful of three kinds of shellfish (oysters, clams, mussels), steamed with wine and aromatics.
• grilled tuna steaks marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil with ginger and wasabi
• two beer butt chickens
• a spice-rubbed flank steak, medium-rare
• bratwursts
• There was also potato salad. I think.

We also consumed many more beers than seemed likely, or even possible, considering the advancing age of the several participants. While I will incriminate nobody and admit to nothing, a group of six gentlemen consumed between them more than 100 beers plus a glass each Remy Martin (my birthday, you see!) and an odd martini or three.

After a late-night snack of empanadas, I retired. The next day we recovered with a lunch of a gigantic pot of sancocho, a South American soup made with various meats (in this case chicken, beef loin, beef necks, and possibly turkey, though pork, oxtail, and sausages are also traditional) and starches (in this case potatoes, carrots, yucca, plantians, corn on the cob) plus aromatics. Truly there is no more restorative food in the world than a cup of sancocho broth and a nice plate of meat and starch garnished with pico de gallo and hot sauce. Did I mention my brother in law is Colombian, and among our party we numbered two former line cooks, a dedicated amateur (yrs truly) and a restaurant manager?

For dinner that night I made my famous 4-cheese macaroni and cheese, thereby completing the culinary cultural exchange initiated by the empanadas and sancocho, and later I baked bread. I don't often bake outside of my own house, so I was a bit taken aback when I came into the kitchen after taking my loaves out of the oven to find four grow men standing over my bread with a digital camera, pointing and whispering. They turned to me as one, as though driven by some pack instinct, and asked "when can we eat it??" So that was nice.

When my family get together, we eat good.

Then, of course, I came home to my loving wife who was suffering from a deficiency of Vitamin Me.

Froggy attended the funeral of fallen warrior James Suh in California.

This image moved me in a way I can never describe:

Those are SEALs' tridents, gilding Petty Officer Suh's coffin.

I have nothing to add to Froggy's post. Read it.

The State Department has issued a new, less helpful, round of warnings for Americans considering travelling outside CONUS:

The warning did not list countries, nor did department officials offer any additional specifics about threats. The statement said "current information" indicates that al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups are planning attacks against U.S. interests in "multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East."

The short version: everyplace with funny-talkin' furriners and no NASCAR is dangerous.

The targets could include places where Americans meet or visit, such as residential areas, hotels and restaurants, as well as places of worship, schools, clubs, business offices and public areas, the caution said. It also noted that "demonstrations and rioting" can occur with little or no warning.

The short version: Everything you do in the weird furrin' place makes you a target.

I know that the State Department has been getting shorted the last few years, but even with a shrunken budget isn't there anyone at State who can devise a more helpful warning than, "don't go anywhere, and don't do anything when you're there"?

Having recently returned from a junket to the Ministry's Southern division in Savannah, GA (what... you think Sherman gave up out of the goodness of his heart??), I am in recovery mode. As a placeholder to occupy your small minds while I get back up to full strength is this page of the funniest unanswerable questions ever asked of Snopes.com.

[wik] I have to wonder what circumstances bring a person to that exquisite point of desperate loneliness where the only recourse they can imagine is to send an emailed query in all-caps to the anonymous researchers at a website, asking whether the deep welling sadness they are feeling is really caused by pearls. There's something melancholy and poetic in the idea.

The recent wave of intelligent design advocates arguing for the inclusion of creation science into the curricula of high schools throughout our counry has aroused stiff resistance from the advocates of evolution, science and those with more than three neurons to rub together. This was to be expected, since most of us thought that this issue had been resolved round the time of Scopes and his infamous monkey. (Not infamous that way, you pervert.)

However, these are not the only people upset by the biblical intelligent design advocates. Some people are upset because their creation theory is getting short shrift thanks to all the greedy god botherers pushing the Genesis account.

In an open letter to the Kansas School Board, these oppressed individuals are making their case for an intelligent design theory that, on first glance, seems far more probable - and explains a lot more than what we've been used to so far. Witness:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Having made their case for a fair hearing, they proceed to give us some details of their rich and inventive belief system:

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is mere hand-waving and ridiculousness. They have evidence:

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

You can also see the beautiful iconography developed by this heretofore unknown sect:

We need to embrace this new faith.

We need to be touched in our hearts by His noodly appendage.

You can also buy tshirts and mugs.

Burt Rutan is a brilliant designer, a technological innovator, and a genius of the first rank. He is not, however, nearly as clever at coming up with clever names for things. He and eccentric British billionaire Sir Richard Branson have teamed up to form - wait for it -

The Spaceship Company

Inelegant naming conventions aside, this is wicked good news. The new company will be co-owned by Rutan's Scaled Composites and Branson's Virgin Galactic. It will license the rocket and reentry technology first used on SpaceShipOne from Paul Allen's Mojave Aerospace, and will own the designs for White Knight 2 and SpaceShipTwo now under development at Scaled Composites.

The new model mother ship and space ship will have greater range and payload capacity than the originals (which will be installed at the Air and Space Museum this fall - I need to bug Dad to get me into that event.) Virgin Galactic wil recieve two of the WK2's and five of the SS2's, with options on future production; guaranteeing them at least a 18 month monopoly on private spaceflight.

All the crying about NASA's inability to figure out what's wrong with the space shuttle - in both the particular fuel sensor and detaching foam as well as the general why are we spending so goddamned much money on thirty year old technology - maybe turn out to be whining about safety standards for buggy whips a hundred years ago. Private industry could very well make NASA (with the exception of the deep space probes) completely moot, and soon.

Dick Cheney apparently now has the power of life and death over Helen Thomas.