Sunday, August 28, 2005

Rickover

The naval academy at Senn High School, named Rickover Naval Academy, is set to open on September 6. A small newspaper named Substance has published an interesting article on this. A choice excerpt:
On hearing that the military school is to be named the “Rickover” Naval Academy, a Senn teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, quipped: “That about sums up how we feel about it… if you change the first two letters.” For a few days in early May, a sign proclaiming the “Rickover Academy” stood in front of Senn, but nightly editing of the name prompted school officials to remove the sign.

In a previous entry, I had mentioned that there would be a segment on Senn on The NewsHour, to air in May. It turns out this didn't happen, but there was still an interesting feature on aggressive tactics used by military recruiters.

Chicago Public Schools has released test results for its high schools ('03-'04 results -- as of Aug. 28, the CPS web page incorrectly says 2002). Based on these numbers, it's hard to make a case that military academies are good schools. The column to look at is the percentage of students meeting or exceeding PSAE Composite standards. For some selective enrollment schools, over 90% of students meet standards. But for the three military academies in the list, we have Phoenix at 5.3%, Carver at 9.9%, and Chicago Military Academy at 41%. None of them are all that spectacular, and Chicago Military Academy is the only one that is somewhat successful. The Phoenix result, one of the worst in the city, is particularly poor when you consider that a mere 69% of its students are low income, and there is normally a strong correlation between poverty and poor performance.

Arlo

Two months ago I posted this short, enigmatic entry. Here's what that was all about... I had just found out my sister was pregnant. It was at the beginning the second month, and things can go wrong, so I didn't want to say too much. By now, she's got a little roundness that she likes to poke at and has provisionally named Arlo.

I'm gonna be an uncle.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Did I say something funny?

When I told my parents I might go to Plugfest '05 in Boston, they weren't sure what to think.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Weekend at Winfrey's

This past weekend I took a vacation to Union Pier, MI, with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law. We spent Sunday afternoon at what used to be Oprah Winfrey's country estate, just inland of Union Pier.

poolside

Neither of these women is Oprah. Nor do they know Oprah. But somehow a friend of my brother-in-law managed to buy this place from her. And that's how we ended up lounging by her erstwhile pool.

photographers

Here I caught my parents both taking pictures of the same vista. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. (So stop looking at it through a viewfinder!)

Situated on the property are a house, a 20-room guest house, a pool house, a log cabin, and a stable. They've got horses. Oh, the conspicuous consumption! Gotta love it, at least for a day. I can't imagine taking on the responsibility of maintaining such a property, but then, I'm far from being in a position to own one.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Oil

Last month I posted an entry on the rising price of gas, and it's only gotten more expensive since then. I paid $2.86 on Monday, and I noticed it's up to $2.98 at the same gas station today.

I was discussing this with a coworker as we were driving back to the office from lunch. First he says the big oil companies are gouging us while making record profits. I say, record profits, yes, but they sell petroleum products for what the market will bear; if they sold it for less, the oil wells and refineries, now operating at capacity, wouldn't be able to keep up with increased demand, and we'd have a shortage.

But, says my friend, the oil companies can increase their capacity by drilling more wells or building more refineries. Not fast enough, I counter -- it takes time to bring additional capacity on line. And anyway, where should they drill? Oil fields that have been depleted beyond their peak extraction rate won't do us much good.

Then we should explore for new sources of oil, says my friend. But, I say, there has been a lot of exploration done since U.S. production peaked more than three decades ago, and if there's another Saudi Arabia out there to be discovered, wouldn't we have found it already?

Mr. Fusion? my friend asks, jokingly.

There are some who think that $65 per barrel oil is nothing, and $300 per barrel oil is just around the corner. I hope they're wrong, because it would be a disaster unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime.

Metapost: Making it harder to leave comments

Sorry, folks, but deleting spam comments all day long is not my idea of blogging. I'm sure it's not what visitors come here for, either. So I'm compelled to make it just a teensy bit more inconvenient for you to leave comments.

I turned the "word verification" setting on. This means that when you post a comment, you'll be shown a little picture of wavy nonsense text and asked to type what you see. This is supposed to thwart automated spam generators.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Water

seawall

Too many words on the page. Need more pictures.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

When it rains, it pours

No matter how bad things get, you've got to go on living -- even if it kills you.
-- Sholom Aleichem

Yesterday the countertop installers came with a new slab of material to finish a job they started two weeks ago. This time they said the cabinets weren't level enough and left without doing anything. I used up a vacation day for this.

My downstairs neighbor and I spent the rest of the afternoon leveling the cabinets, and we were able to finish early enough to call the installers back and schedule another appointment for today. So I'm using another vacation day today. Fun vacation.

After working on the cabinets, I thought I'd relax and take a bike ride before the sun went down. I went to the basement to get my bicycle. Hmmm, where's my bike? No bike. Damn damn damn damn damn...

Monday, August 15, 2005

Metapost: Wherein I delete a comment

This evening I came home to find a SPAM comment posted to this site. It was some guy hyping a pink sheet stock. Needless to say, I *DELETED* the comment.

Given the miniscule amount of traffic my site gets, I don't know what they thought they would gain by putting their gelatinous pink tripe up here, unless the hot tip was meant for me. Sorry, but I'm not that gullible. Message to spammers, in the immortal words of our Vice President: Go fuck yourselves. (I don't normally resort to naughty words here, but I figure if it's good enough for Dick, it's good enough for me.)

Sunday, August 14, 2005

South of Foster

There's a good sandwich shop called Ba Le on the northwest corner of Broadway and Argyle. I went there last night and got a vegetable sandwich and three Vietnamese spring rolls, all for just $7. Highly recommended.

Less pleasant is the walk north on Broadway from there. The 5130 block of North Broadway (between Winona and Foster) is particularly blighted.

This spring I did an informal survey of Broadway between Foster and Bryn Mawr. This was to gather information that might be useful for the Broadway redevelopment task force. I've published some of my findings here, and someday I'd like to write more about that. But I was really struck last night by how seedy things have gotten just south of my survey area.

When I first moved into the neighborhood, the 5130 block was dominated by a Burger King on the west side of the street. Then last year, I noticed the Burger King sign was replaced by one that said "Burger Delights." Shortly after that, I noticed that the sign was changed to "Chicken Delights" (though they didn't bother to change the drive-thru signs). I guess they had a falling out with their beef supplier? Last night, I noticed the lights were out; as I came closer, I could see parts of the building were boarded up. Burger/Chicken Delights is no more.

Across the street, next door to a Haitian church, is a single story building that was occupied by a Cingular Wireless store. But Cingular moved out sometime in the last three months. Rounding out the east side of the block is the run-down Asian Village shopping mall, which looks even less inviting now that it is surrounded by shuttered buildings.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Metapost: Comments policy

It's been a while since I've done a good meta.

Comments are good. Go ahead and leave one if you like. But you'll have to be a registered user at Blogger.com to do so.

A few people I know have taken a look around here and then complained to me that they didn't want to register with Blogger just so they could leave a comment. I could set up my blog to allow anonymous comments, but I choose not to, and here's Exhibit A as to why: a site I linked to in a recent entry. Mr. Anonymous is not accountable for what he says. Mr. Anonymous is occasionally thoughtful, but he can also be an abusive jerk, and he's not welcome here.

Some bloggers opt not to allow any comments at all. In this case it's the blogger who is unaccountable for what he or she writes. This is the kind of person who always wants the last word in an argument. If he doesn't give the other side an opportunity to say anything, so much the better. (If you disagree with this characterization -- leave a comment.)

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Random thoughts

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the explosion of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, Japan. Since then, no nuclear weapons have been used in war.

Yesterday Iran, against the wishes of the IAEA, publicly resumed work on developing nuclear weapons.

Today US light sweet crude oil hit a record $65 per barrel.

Today President Bush took a break from his vacation to visit the suburbs of Chicago, where he signed a transportation bill. He was confronted by anti-war protesters.

Yesterday the mayor of Baghdad was forced out of office, and a Shiite militia chief took over. But our government still says the war is going well.

The Department of Defense announced that on the fourth anniversary of 9/11, they'll stage a "Freedom Walk" that will include a country-western concert.

Doesn't it all make you want to just take a break from reality and play video games for hours on end? Well, don't.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Gray matter blues

I was home Wednesday afternoon, dealing with a disastrous kitchen remodeling project, when I got a phone call that put my problems in perspective.

It was one of my roommates from college. Surprised he would call my home in the middle of a weekday, I was initially happy to hear from him; it had been too long since we last talked. But he had bad news.

Three years ago it was discovered that he had a brain tumor. He had surgery to remove the vast majority of it, and he's been on chemotherapy ever since to keep the remnants from growing back. The chemo produces few side effects, so my friend has been able to return to a fairly normal life.

Every three months my friend has an MRI taken of the brain, and it never showed any change in the tumor. Until this last one. So now he'll need to start radiation and a different kind of chemo. He'll get sick and lose his hair. But more important -- he'll be fighting for his life.

My friend appears to be taking all this amazingly well. He insists that he'll continue to work through his treatment, and he shows absolutely no worry.

I encourage you to head over to the American Brain Tumor Association's website, where you can purchase a set of wristbands in -- I kid you not -- brain matter gray. ABTA is part of the recently-formed Brain Tumor Funders' Collaborative (BTFC).

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

What to call GWOT

Last week I heard an item on NPR about how the White House is backing away from the term "Global War on Terrorism." I've written previously on how this phrase really doesn't make sense.

The Administration's new name for GWOT is "Global Struggle against Violent Extremism," or GSAVE for short. Nice acronym, and I'm pleased that they've recognized the shortcomings of GWOT, but I'm not sure GSAVE is much better.

I think one of the reasons GWOT served the Administration well was because war is a strong word -- it evokes a clear image and leads to positive associations (heroic warriors, victory, etc.). The problem with it is that it doesn't do a good job of accurately describing the situation.

But Global Struggle against Violent Extremism... Now it's a struggle, which is a fuzzier concept than war. And when someone struggles, it suggests that they're not doing too well. Also, the well-understood concept of terrorism has been replaced by violent extremism. What constitutes violent extremism? Is terrorism a type of violent extremism, or is it the other way around?