Back in Bama

Back in my home state of Bama, there is a discussion going on in the capital for 2012....over school books.  There's this idea of moving over to each kid in Bama having an electronic tablet of sorts, and all school text books being issued digitally to each kid.  The state is estimating this shift to cost in the range of $800 million....which is a heck of a lot of money.

The experts say that the current pricing of text books is about $90 each....which makes it pretty difficult to buy new books on a regular schedule.

The problems with a e-book situation?  Well.....you can figure that it'd cost $200 for each kid to get his e-book and at least ten percent would damage their e-book each and every year.  Most parents would have issues over this replacement situation and some probably would not be able to readily pay for such a replacement.

In the 1970s when I attended school....we still had some books dating back to the late-1950s (our English Literature book for example).  I can remember one science-related class where the teacher had to correct the material written into the text book because over a period of eight years....the text book had outdated information in it.

This e-book episode sounds kind of interesting but I just can't see kids being able to make this work.  There's always the batter-charge episode.....where the kid might show up for a class and his e-book is 'dead'.....so he just smiles at the teacher because he can't recite some Shakespeare line from his e-book.  Or you might have some young gal who figures out how to add more books to the e-book, and is sitting in a math class and reading some French novel.

My guess is that the political folks will talk on the subject and eventually just give up.  Real books will stay on for a while in Bama (maybe for forty more years).  Heck, my old 1958 English Literature book might still be in use for all I know.

Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney has passed.

I have this short list of journalists and news people that I have respected over the past fifty-odd years.

There's Paul Harvey, who knew how to explain a pretty difficult story in 90 seconds or less.  He preached to you on Saturdays and gave a dose of Americanism that you needed.

There was Harry Reasoner who gave out straight facts and real news.  He wouldn't have touched Brittney Spears with a ten-foot pole or ever even mentioned Bigfoot.

There was Frank Reynolds from ABC, who could sum up a big mess in forty words, and leave you relaxed because it really wasn't as big a mess as the other dimwits were portraying a story.

And then came Andy Rooney.  He didn't really cover news....he just picked out topics and gave you the 1948 view of reality over a modern-day topic.  For some reason....his 1948-view was precisely what we needed.

To be honest, we are coming to an end-point where there just aren't any more journalists.....just wannabe folks who pretend to be journalists.

The Missing "Juans"

The Feds came to Bama this week....and said they had a legal interest in knowing possible civil rights violations.  The curious thing....this new investigation involves Bama schools.  They want to know just about everything you can imagine in statistics....with every single school in Bama.  All of this has to deal with the anti-illegal law that Bama put into play earlier this year.

The Bama legal folks stood up and said they would be ok with providing this info....once the federal government lawsuit is finished (one way or another).  The Feds, for all general purposes, have said that the state lacks the authority to have a anti-immigration law.

I'm guessing this week....there will be a court-ordered deal where some federal judge says the legal request by the Attorney General is legit, and Bama should comply.  Bama will quickly walk up to another Federal judge and likely get a stay on this deal.....until a third federal judge can determine if the request is really valid or not.  You would get the impression that federal judges are kept busy these days having read, re-read, and then lay out various interpretations of the law.  No more goofing off or playing golf on Thursday afternoon.

I sat down and looked at what data the Attorney General was requesting.  It's a pretty big request.  They want every single public school in Bama to report with a list of alll enrolled students as of the last week of September.  Then they want another list of all kids who left from the school since the school year started.  Then they want the reason why the kids quit or left since school started.  Then they want a list of all kids who have at least one unexplained absence since the end of September.  Then they want the school to list the race of each kid in school  Then they want the original country of origin of each kid in school.  And then they want the English language ability of each kid on a list (the most difficult one, because some kids don't speak true English).

Having grown up in the Bama school system....allow me to offer some insightful analysis.  There were three folks in the head office of my school.  There was Mr "Joe" (the principal), Mr "Little Joe" (the vice-principal), and Wanda (the secretary).

Seventy-five percent of Mr "Little Joe's" job was discipline.  I think he literally walked from 0730 in the morning from one mess to another.  Any kid with a infraction....ended up in his office....and he dealt with them in a pretty precise fashion.  If you had to have an investigation....he was the guy running it.

"Mr Joe"?  He was generally there to handle teacher complaints or parent complaints.  I think he could pretty well fill in half the hours of the day in private meetings and sorting various problems out.

"Wanda"?  She was there to sign every note that a kid brought in from the parents to explain why they were out for five days.  Her signature was vital....otherwise, it wasn't legit.  Wanda just signed them.....she never kept a single copy or reported to anyone.  The kid would take that note around to his teachers throughout the day to explain things.  Odds were....he only gave the home-room teacher a look, and maybe one teacher throughout the rest of the day.

So I looked back at this list of data.  Personally, it'll shock me if most schools maintain some kind of data listing like this.  Frankly, they might have to go back to the kids and ask some stupid questions.  I can imagine this scene of "Mr Little Joe" confronting me and asking me my country of origin, and I respond England.  I'd likely stand there and grin.....and he'd likely be at a point of weakness....and just accept that.  My other associates?  Some might have been more creative and said they were originally from Russia, Mongolia, or maybe even Iceland.  By the end of the day...."Mr Little Joe" would have returned and spent four hours putting this all into some spreadsheet, or he might have found some 10th grader that he'd just give them a school project and hope they did it right.

The unexplained absences?  Hopefully, the 2011 "Wanda" keeps a copy of these notes.  If not, then you have to visit every single teacher.  So, you can imagine this listing.  Donny stayed out two days.....hauling soybeans to Lawrenceberg for his dad, the farmer.  Karl stayed home one day helping his dad dig up the septic tank.  Lynn spent half a day out....getting a tattoo removed that Mom never blessed in the first place.  Bobby was out for a full week....attending a alcohol rehab session in Montana.

So you can imagine 1526 schools (I checked) across Alabama.  You can imagine 1526 spreadsheets being sent to the Attorney General's office.  From this list....over 730,000 kids are listed.  You can imagine ten lawyers trying to analyze this massive amount of data.  They start asking stupid questions....why are so many guys out hauling soybeans?  Why are 122 students in some kind of alcohol rehab episode?  Why are 16 kids missing and having their tattoos removed?   Why are forty-four kids from Mongolia?  Where did these 1,226 Icelandic kids come from?

I can imagine these ten idiot lawyers sitting in a DC office for an entire week....and then coming to this conclusion....none of this data makes any sense.  So they try to associate every single Latino out of this list.  Somewhere down the line....they end up with this list of 2,323 Latinos who fell off the Bama listing.  So they search now for the 2,323 Latino kids.

You can imagine these fancy lawyers showing up in some Bama community and asking stupid questions about what happened to Juan.  No one trusts the guy.  So there's no information flowing.  The DC lawyers spend three weeks in Bama trying to track down the 2,323 missing "Juans".  By the end of this episode....there's not much to reveal.  However, the lawyers will all note that they gained eight pounds during this period.....eating mostly high-on-the-hog.  They also met some fine Bama gals, who gave them their phone numbers.  They got invited to a Auburn football game.  They also ate some fine catfish over at the Catfish Cabin.  They were entertained by various guitar pickers and banjo players.  They got religion via some revival that they attended.  They sipped some great spring water in "dry counties" where alcohol is forbidden.  And they were stopped at least twice each and asked by Bama law enforcement what country of origin they are.....and if they could produce an ID.

For some reason, I don't see much coming out of this episode.

Only in Bama.

The "Pass The Bill" Bill

I ended up watching the President's speech.  It's probably sixth speech of the year that I've watched him give.  It needed to be a five-star speech.  By the end....I was feeling mostly it fell into the 2-star marginal speech category.  The jobs potential?  It's hard to say.  It kinda felt like a guy was having a heart attack and we needed to use the defibrillator but in this case....we just had a K-Mart defibrillator with four AAA-batteries in it.  The "jolt" might just be a tingle, and I'd be in NCAA-heaven with Bama playing Auburn everyday (it's the best a guy from Bama could hope for....Iron Bowl in heaven daily).

The $450 billion?  Well....it'll come out of some imaginary pocket like the $800 billion that we found for stimulus a while back.  If it did turn around the jobs market, then we'd actually have more folks paying taxes, and maybe make the money back.  But if you only created 100k jobs over twelve months with the $450 billion, then it's mostly a waste of time and money.

At some point....I had this deja vu feeling over "pass the bill".  Later on, some journalist commented....it got mentioned seventeen times during this speech.  I kept thinking it was a psychological thing.....like when Luke Skywalker used his Jeda powers to make some dopey guy do something that he wouldn't normally do.  Luke usually had his hand out and was focusing hard on his victim.  To be honest, I never saw any mortal character in Star Wars defeat the Jeda mindmelt deal.  It's hard to say if that Boehner guy or Cantor kid from Virginia can stand up against the President's Jeda powers.  Mortal men just can't fight it....usually.

So will it pass?  I'm thinking that the House ought to split this up into individual bills....for each single item. Up and down vote.  Seventy percent of the bills would easily pass by the Republicans in the House, and likely stop in the Senate because they just won't dare stand for twenty-odd bills.  Frankly, they'd likely say it's all or none....making Boehner and Cantor mostly grin that the old guys in the Senate just weren't up to one-page bills (too much to read).

The plan to fix roads and schools?  Which ones?  Even split amongst all fifty states?  You can imagine everyone wanting a chunk of the money to do something with Route 16 highway, the old gym at the school, and replacing a 64-year old bridge considered unsafe.  The issue is that you don't have a list sitting there with projects ready to go (remember, don't utter "shovel ready" in any national audience or folks start laughing).  I'm guessing over 900 principals are pulling out their dream plans tomorrow morning and trying to convince Senator Tubby that they truly need eight million to build this great school annex building.  You figure four months to argue over this priority list of projects, another six months to get the contracts fixed up and signed, and another eighteen months before the school is finished.  There's limits to this concept.

Then I came to the end of this speech.  It felt like a political huddle with a coach giving you his strategy.  Confidence wasn't really overflowing on this matter.  It might have some effect, but not as much as you'd like.  Would it convince a company to grow it's jobs base?  No.  Would it convince a boss to hire up forty more employees?  Maybe, but the President left out the various regulations that he'd dump (momentarily). So that wasn't going to help much.

Simply Business

There are two interesting business episodes unfolding, which I kinda have an interest in.

First, Borders Books are bankrupt, period.  They thought someone would come out of the shadows and buy them....but the amount of debt and unsustainable profit is an issue.  To be honest, between Amazon and these digital books available....it's hard to be a local neighborhood book store (even in a massive mall).   It is a sign of the times.

A trend here?  Digital books are growing and I would suspect by 2020 that seventy-five percent of all books will be digital, as sales go.  I won't say it's a positive trend, but at least people are still reading.

Borders was this place you go and hang out....picking up an odd book for five minutes and sitting at some easy chair.  If you felt right with the book, you bought it.  Coffee?  Yes.  It was a good atmosphere, I will admit.

The other big story?  Readers Digest wants to sell itself.  Amusingly enough....they want a billion dollars.  Last year, they had around 1.4 billion in revenue, but that equaled around thirty million dollars in losses.  To me.....that's a huge signal that you've got big problems.....over a billion in sales, and you still can't show revenue.

Who buys Readers Digest?  Mostly older folks and medical establishments.  If you go to a routine dentist or doctor's appointment....you typically find it still laid out and offered as reading material while you wait.

As a kid, I remember reading it.  The last time I picked up and read one?  About six years ago.  I actually bought one.  What I found laid out in the one I bought.....one extremely political story in favor of John Kerry, and two stories over the environment and global warming, which tried to sound factual but were loaded with unproven points.  I sat there shaking my head because it'd turned into the National Geographic....just another trend magazine run mostly by a bunch of agenda writers and editors.

Will anyone come up to pay a billion for Readers Digest?  I suspect few if any takers.  They might eventually unload for around $750 million and end up in the hands of some Brazilian or Saudi billionaire.  They would likely hire out a number of cheap writers to contribute and try to remake the magazine into something totally different.  Eventually, it'll fail completely and disappear from the shelves.

So in the end....two more dinosaurs dying out.  

Book Review: Reshaping of Everyday LIfe

Once in a while, I will toss out a book review.  Today?  Reshaping of Everyday Life (1790-1840).

It's an odd book, which has been out for over a decade.  To be honest, I doubt if it ever sold any good numbers at all.  You can still find it on Amazon.

It's a book you can read over in a week, and covers everyday American life for a fifty year period in the colonial years.  I would actually like to make it a mandatory reading for every fifteen year old kid in America because it really paints a harsh environment where people were lucky to live to be forty years old.

The book covers love, romance, marriage, houses, food, coffee, entertainment, booze, and just about every situation you can imagine for that period.

In the end....you came away impressed on how people survived and enjoyed what little they did have.  Just having one pair of shoes....would have been a great achievement for most folks.  So if you needed some reading material over American history that would entertain you....order the book and settle back for good reading.

My Walk

Yesterday, I walked seven miles.  I started out at the Arlington Cemetery.....crossed the bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, and walked all the way to the Capital building, before turning north toward Union Station, and finally ending up almost at the end of H Street in DC.  Naturally, by the end, I was fairly dehydrated and just about on my last cylinder.  Then, the German Biergarden came into focus....I stopped in there....and the kid gave me a cup of ice water and a German beer.  Within fifteen minutes, I felt re-hydrated.

The highlight of this walk?  At the end, I had this chance to watch a DC funeral.  The cops had come and blocked off an intersection to allow the possession to proceed.  There in the front....was a horse-drawn carriage with the coffin.  It was an odd deal....the horse had gold glitter over his hooves.  He was a big fellow and had no problems in pulling this short carriage.

Behind the carriage?  Well....here were two forty-foot long limos.  I'm guessing "special" family members rode in these.  And then came the thirty-eight other vehicles.

At that point, along H Street....I stopped to assess the local environment.  Twenty years ago....I might have been the only white guy on the entire street.  To be honest, H Street is fairly run down and in some kind of private recovery phase.  The city is talking up a trolley car deal, and put the track on the street....although it could be five years before this electrical issue is fixed up (they have a law dating back to around 1910 which says no electrical lines can be laid out to support a trolley car operation).

If you go a street back of H Street....what you find is that the young yuppies of DC have started buying up the rowhouses....tossing in $200k of repairs, and suddenly have a half-million dollar house (least by DC standards).  In effect, they are buying the older black generation out and changing the entire landscape of H Street neighborhoods.

My guess is that half the buildings along H Street will be bought out and torn down within the next two decades....and this new urban mecca will come about.  The comical thing?  The yuppies likely vote Republican and the voting results in ten years might change in a dramatic fashion.

So right now.....you've got the urban yuppies and the remaining hardcore blacks in the same atmosphere.  It wouldn't make any sense, except in DC.